Motorcycle Photography Tutorial 1
To say that shooting motorcycles is one of my favorite things would be an understatement. As a professional photographer you're often faced with projects or challenges which aren't ideal, but you have to make the work. It's just the name of the game, and if it were easy, everyone would do it. (Even though at times it seems like everyone does)
The above photo of the 2009 Trumph Thruxton is one of my favorites lately. This bike oozes cool, and if you ask anyone that owns one the biggest problem they will likely mention about the bike is that you get stopped everywhere you go by curious folks. While that's not a huge problem shooting a bike like this in a packed parking garage is.
Believe it or not, this shot was made in an almost full parking garage in the middle of the day, not in a studio. Before setting out to photograph a bike for a client you need to have a strong concept of what the photo will look like. Some of your concept should be derived from the constraints of the shoot and some of it should be your own creation.
For example, if you know you're going to be pressed for time taking the bike somewhere will likely not be an option. So in a case where time is a concern you need to ask your client some questions about their location. What's near the premise, which direction do the buildings face, etc. . .Knowing some of these things will save you a ton of time and in the long run it will help to properly set expectations for the outcome.
In the case of the Thruxton I knew that it was going to be in a multi-level garage and that time was going to be an issue. I knew for this shot I wanted the halo effect of an overhead light and that in order for the background to fade to black I would need to be on one of the bottom floors of the garage. Given that a bike is relatively small space is not too much of an issue for a shot like this. With that said, I began to look for three empty parking spots.
It would have been relatively easy to get this shot with only two open spots, but I knew if I went that route the lines on the pavement may have been distracting, and I would have run the possibility of needing additional work in Photoshop. Once I found a spot I backed the bike in and began to setup my equipment.
The lighing for this is really quite simple. There is one Alien Bees AB800 boomed over the bike with a Manfrotto 420B boom. The Manfrotto boom is pretty awesome and I've got to recommend you have at least one in your arsenal. It can be configured as either a light stand or a boom so when you need the added versatility it's worth it's weight in gold. The soft box is your run of the mill Paul C. Buff medium box.
The exposure for this photography isn't really too tricky. With the AB800 at half power the exposure was f/11 at 1/200th of a second. When you're shooting something like this remember that your shutter speed directly corelates to the amount of ambient light in your shot. So if you slowed your shutter speed down you'd start to see more of the cars, handrails, etc. . . in the parking garage. On a shot like this you could actually cheat and go with 1/250th or 1/320th of a second as long as the lower part of the frame were lost. You could then crop it out in post.
A shot like this is really a two way street. As I mentioned before you could have gone higher with your shutter speed and had the background even more black, but then you would have to crop. Or, you could leave your max sync speed at 1/200th of a second and have to do a little burning in Photoshop later.
For this shot I chose the latter of the two options and had to burn the background in slightly. Overall I am really pleased with how the shot turned out. It's a beautiful bike and now there's a beautiiful shot of it hanging on the wall.
If you have any questions about this photography tutorial, or the motorcycle, please feel free to contact me. For more of my thoughts on motorcycle photography you can check out this page, or view my gallery from the 7th annual Barber Vintage Festival.
