Triumph Bonneville joins the jet set
Triumph Bonneville: Flying High.
This photograph is of a Triumph Bonneville SE 2012 with an aircraft hanger as a background. The cool colour qualities of this setting create almost a black and white feel to the photo, which allows the warm colours of the bike to stand out to good effect.
Also the Bonneville is a retro bike, which looks good set against a modern jet set backdrop.
Light painting technique
Motorcycle Photography: Light painting.
Here we have an example of the ‘Light Painting’ technique. The subject used was a Triumph Bonneville SE photographed using a Nikon D700 mounted on a tripod with a 30 second exposure, f16, ISO 1000. The light source was a small hand held pencil torch used sparingly to ‘paint’ in the detail. With this method of bike photography, sometimes more is less and the generous use of what in photography terms is called Negative Space, adds an edgy feel to the photograph.
Motorcycle Photography South West
However these photographs represent a first attempt at this slightly tricky technique and the resulting images look flat and underexposed. Using an effect called tone mapping during the post production also hasn’t helped.
It was done to deliberately try and inject a cool feeling, but has in fact contributed to the images looking drab.
The other main problem was I had tried to capture the image in one 30 second exposure and that is not good practice.
To see how the project progressed and the changes made to improve the outcome, read the second part: Motorcycle Photography Light Painting Project: 2
Here is a photograph of a Triumph Thunderbird Sport motorcycle taken in woodland. This bike photography shoot was set up using off camera flash and if you click and zoom in on the photograph you can see how the detail of the bike is picked out.
Triumph Thunderbird Sport woodland photo shoot. BikePix motorcycle photography.
Motorcycle photography is no different than photographing any other subject and the same portrait techniques and principles apply. In this example the strobe flash lighting was positioned to light the bike and enhance the detail, whilst be careful to avoid direct reflections which would create ‘hot spots’ and blown out highlights.
Exposure is controlled by using the camera in Manual mode to select the correct aperture and shutter speed for the ambient lighting conditions.
The picture below shows just how the photo shoot was set up using wireless controlled flash:
Motorcycle Photography: photo shoot set up
Triumph Thunderbird Sport woodland photo shoot
Motorcycle photography and video for fun 