Take a Picture, it lasts longer
I’m into photography, not an expert by any means, but I do enjoy taking pictures of motorcycles. Turns out photographing motorcycles is not very easy. If you are wanting to get some great pictures of your scooter, here are my top 10 tips that I have learned during my journey.
- Know your camera – Cameras can be complicated, even the so called “point and shoot” models. If you have a SLR, well they just start at complex. So take some time, read the manual, practice and get to know your equipment thoroughly.
- Work-flow – Wait a minute, that sound like work! Yup, it is work, the more time and effort you put into planning your work-flow the better the results you will get. Bottom line is, you need to know what you are going to do with your new photos, how you are going to transfer/import them, what format they will be, how you may edit them, save them, store them, and share them as print or digital images. Know all that before you start.
- Daylight – Night pictures of bikes look nice, but you want to leave that to a pro level photographer. Stick to daytime, early morning or late afternoon is best. Mid-day sun is pretty harsh. Always have the sun at your back also.
- Watch your background – The most important. Look all around for anything that will distract the viewer from the subject. You are better off having a block wall or garage door in the background than your neighbors red F150. A good choice is to go to a park and put the bike on the sidewalk. Lots of green and shade trees usually make a nice background.
- Avoid People – If motorcycles are hard to photograph then people are darn near impossible. Everyone would like to have a model posing with their bike, but you will have to leave that to a professional or you will be pulling your hair out. Try to keep people out of your background also. They are distracting. Here is my trick if I am at a show and I see a bike I want to photograph. Wait until the awards and prize announcements start, all the people migrate towards that, leaving you undisturbed to take pictures.
- Use Flash – If you have a camera that you can manually (force) fire the flash in daylight, use it. The fill light from the flash can light up some of those nooks and crannies. It can make a big difference.
- Perspectives – Try to take your pictures from many different angles. Two reasons for this: 1 your bike has chrome that will make weird reflections and glares that you may not see until it is too late. Different angles will give you better chances of getting a good picture. 2 Unusual perspectives are more interesting. You might try laying on the ground and using a step stool to get unique perspectives.
- Editing – An image usually is not considered finished until at least some editing is performed. Basics are cropping, color correction, and sharpening. I use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom programs which are expensive to buy. Adobe has also just released Photoshop Express which is a web based editing service that uses many of the features from Photoshop and Lightroom. Best of all it is free. Here is an example of what editing can do for your picture.
- Sharing – OK so you have a great photo, but what are you going to do with it? If you look to the right margin on this blog you will see photos from a Flickr motorcycle group. Flickr is a free on-line photo sharing community. There are others but Flickr is the one I use and it has many resources. You can share, learn in forums, and even use print services. So check it out.
OK, so that is only 9 tips but I figure I should quit while I am ahead because number 10 is really hard. It is to learn about photography in general. Photography is one of those things that the more you learn you realize how much more you need to learn. This is my best resource for learning the craft. This week in photography.
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