Yamaha XVS 1300 Cruiser Motorbike

A couple of the Yamaha XVS1300 from yesterday, I like to think of it as an automotive work of art that no picture can ever do justice to. Not sure if we got the location right looking back, perhaps an abandoned warehouse would have been better, giving a more gritty feel. Same setup as the previous post with the same problems of no light stands! I'll have to get some moving shots soon, could be a little tricky as I might have to ride backwards as a pillion passenger snapping as I go!

Suzuki Bandit 1250 Streetfighter

I was out on the bike with a friend today and we decided to stop get a few shots of his new bike. It's a 1250 Suzuki Bandit for any bike buffs out there, a special edition I'm also informed. We pretty much lit the bike with 2 speedlights on full tilt and I also had a polariser on, this was more to try and reduce the ambient exposure so I could fire at under 1/200 without stopping the aperture down too much. Unfortunately I didn't take any light stands or modifiers so it was a bit pot luck with the lighting but I think we managed, it although I had to put my VAL (voice activated light stand) ie, my mate, to good use. I processed them in Lightroom and Photoshop with a bit of dodging and burning to bring out the clouds a little.

Motorbike Photography

I'm going to start doing a bit of motorbike photography, this was quite a quick attempt largely due to the freezing conditions outside. The garage wasn't the tidiest I've seen and there was a car just behind the bike so I had to be careful not to light any of it. There was no ambient light so everything was lit by 3 flashes, one you can see in the top left and another between the car and the bike, both these were hard unmodified lights. The third light was an umbrella just to camera left and this provided the detail to all the chrome. Everything was on full manual and with the flash powers varying from about 1/2 to about 1/64. They were all fired with pocket wizards, the quick mono conversion was done in CS3. Hopefully I'll be getting out and doing some moving shots with more riders and less lights!

Crazy Stunts

We went to the Llangollen Balloon festival at the weekend, didn't see a great deal of balloons as the weather was pretty poor but the stunt bikes were pretty amazing, the lads did a victory lap at the end and they all looked about 12! Anyway this is a little different from the stuff I normally shoot so it was a nice change. I was shooting on Shutter priority as I needed to freeze the action more than anything, so that was set to 1/800, ISO 200 using a 70-200 focal range, the appertures were usually about f9, AF mode was set to Al Servo.

Motorbike Photography

I went out with a friend yesterday to get some photos of his bike, a Kawasaki something or other, I don't do a great deal of car/bike photos but we wanted to do some top gear type shots which is basically a photo with an odd coloured gradient (usually purple) over layering the sky. It is actually a cool effect, I'll put my effort up, this had a cyan coloured sky to compliment the red of the bike (colour theory). Anyway as soon as we pulled up to take photos the heavens opened and we had to sit in the car while everything else got soaked, in the end it wasn't too bad because the rain drops added to the overall picture I thought. I metered for the sky and used flash on the bike. I've just looked at the exif data and it turns out I was at ISO 50, no wonder I had to crank my flash up, I had been on a commercial shoot earlier that day and must have forgot to change it back. Anyway these were taken at about 24mm at f/8 for 1/6 sec. I think the cyan sky one might be a touch too dark but there is plenty of space at the side for text, in say a magazine article which is useful to remember. I quite like high contrast one with the yellow tinge to the left, low, dynamic angles are a key ingredient to this type of photography.