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.
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