Where is Grant's guide to photographing your bike?
Edwin W
George Schick
Deacon Patrick
With abandon,
Patrick
Christopher Murray
Cheers!
Chris
Matt Rhodes
How to improve bike photos five to fifteen %, NOW WITH EXAMPLES
February 22, 2010
Just things to think about if you want to shoot some good photos and haven’t given it much thought. Nothing carved in stone here, but lots of opinions … This post will remain up for about two days.
At the end of this there’s a link with examples of still-bike photos. It’ll upload a PDF to your desktop, or wherever they go. Zoom in to read & view.
STILL PHOTOS OF BIKES AGAINST WALLS, etc.
1. Shoot the drive side.
Whenever possible, and if its your bike or a friends bike its always possible, shoot the right/drive side. If you shoot the left side of the bike, nobody can see the crank and derailers, and everybody wants to see those.
When you shoot the bike on the street you always get the wrong side of it, because that’s how people park it, and that’s where you are as you walk by it. It’s hard to get a good picture of a stranger’s bike, because you can’t just move it around.
Also, our eyes are used to moving left to right. Its how we read and write, and so a bike thats heading left to right looks more natural. No doubt in Japan and other countries where they read right to left, this is less of a benefit. And in those countries, a bike with left-side drive would probably look better, aiming left. But as it is, showing the drive side components, even in Japan, trumps the bikes direction. It just so happens that here in America, a bike headed to the right wins both points.
2. Back up and zoom in. Split the handlebar.
The bike looks cleaner and less confusing and is just overall a more pleasant subject to look at when you make everything look proportional and clear. When youre shooting the whole bike, dont get in close with a wide angle lens. With most cameras, this throws everything out of whack. The wheels look different sizes, and the handlebar looks a mess.
Instead, back up at least twenty-five feet and zoom in. Then, shoot from an angle that makes the bike look like its split in half vertically. Hide the left (far) side of the handlebar behind the near side of it, so you see only one brake lever, and theres as little evidence as possible that theres even a left-side handlebar. The ONLY way to do this is by backing up and using a longer lens. I think.
A bike photographed this way has same-sized wheels and looks right.
3. Shoot in the shade to avoid shadows.
There may be artsy ways of using shadows, but if the goal is a clear photograph of the bike, not some moody art shot, then keep shadows out of it.
4. Watch your backgrounds
If the bike is the subject and the shot is posed in a semi-contrived setting, use a plain background, or at least a consistent one. A brick wall isnt plain, but is consistent. A barn door—not plain, but consistent. The entire background should be the same. Dont just lean it against a table outside a cafnd shoot away.
Your goal is to make the bike stand out and make the background not distract. When the background is a complicated scene of Chinese New Year celebrations, machines, and muggings, keep the bike in focus and blur the background. (Cameras that let you control the aperture make this easy.)
When possible, shoot against a background thats white, off-white, grey, or black.
Whatever looks right with the bike. Bright colors are distracting. We shoot bikes against our white roll-up doors, and the lines are distracting, but — what we do and what is ideal aren’t always the same.
5. Keep the cables, crop the wheels (a little)
If the bike has cables sticking up, show all of them. But if the focus is the bikes frame and parts, its good to crop a few inches of the wheels out. This enlarges the rest of the bike, and you arent eliminating anything that matters.
6. Dont get too wound up about perfection.
Catalogue shots of bikes used to show the tires with the labels legible, usually at 12:00 and 6:00, and with the valve stems either at 6:00, or hidden behind the chainstay and the fork blade. When its your bike or your friends bike, or a shot for eBay or whatever, thats too fussy. Its helpful to know some of these ideas and options, but draw your own line.
Pictures of riders on bikes
1. Apply the same rule (not law) of shooting the bike heading right, and showing the drive-side components. Its not so easy to do that here in Japan or England than in America, on roads shared with cars. Its easier on trails or bike paths or in , but you still need to have them ride on the left side, and try to find a good spot to shoot from off the road on the right.
2. Shoot them coming into you, not riding away.
It just looks better, more inviting. Maybe that comes from a preference for seeing a dinner animal come toward you, rather than running away; or having your parents come home, as opposed to leaving you; or preferring to look at faces instead of butts. That may all be hogwash, but shoot coming and going, and see what you like.
3. Try to shoot riders with their right pedal between 2:00 and 3:00. Besided being at maximum flex, it just looks more active, and in a still photo, that counts.
4. Tell your subjects what to wear …
. . . if you want them to think youre a controlling weirdo jerk. But honestly, if youre going out for a ride expressly to come back with some good pictures and they dont have a preference, leave the black at home. Navy, too. Dark colors are too easily underexposed and usually lack detail, and you end up with heads suspended above blackness, and arms coming out of the dark. You can see examples of this in some of the homepage photos of Sean in his black wooly. Near the end of the bunch. The one of him riding up the road with the green grass and grey sky would’ve looked great if he’d had one of our wine-red tops on, but no….he had to wear black.
In color photos, red looks great, and plaid looks great, and if you can combine the two, in a nicely composed scene, its going to look fine.
5. Helmets in the woods …
. . . make the rider look just plucked from a Sci-Fi movie set, or at least like an intruder who doesnt belong. People get all nuts about published photos of helmetless riders, but not every photo sends a message. It can be just an image; and if you think brilliant super-vented elongated and aerodynamic helmets complement any bucolic or idyllic outdoor landscape, then we disagree.The least photo-wrecking bike helmets are plain looking ones, and not white. The photographer’s dream helmet looks like a coonskin cap.
Race team jerseys in the woods dont belong, either. Theyre covered with advertisements and corporate logos, and they wreck woodsy photo.
6. Camera angle
The easiest camera angle is riders head height, but its also the worst. When all is in place, the head-height camera can work, but getting the camera well above or below the rider makes even lousy photos at least less predictable, more interesting.
7. Rule of Thirds
It’s an old and good rule (not law) for any photo. Visually divide the scene into three equal parts both vertically and horizontally, and try to put the subject at the line intersections. When riders are the subject and you follow the other rules already mentioned, thatll put them coming toward the camera on the left side of the photo.
This isnt the secret to a good photo, but its a guide many good photographers use.
When you have both land and sky in the photoor road and land whichever one of them you want to emphasize should make up two-thirds of the photo. In this case there arent any imaginary intersections to guide you, but there are imaginary horizontal lines.
8. Don’t let the road itself eat up the hole lower half of the photo
unless the road itself happens to be the subject.
Otherwise, dont let it get so big. Its easy to let that happen when youre concentrating on the rider. You can save a half-road photo by cropping it from the bottom, but be aware it as youre composing, and youll have to crop less and less often.
The link.
Grant @ Rivendell
2. Crank at 3:00 or a bit above. This one is a hair too low. We call this “thrust-ready” (ha). But it does make the bike seem ready to pedal.
3. “Split the bike” front to back. The right side grip etc should block the left side as much as possible. Here, the grip does, but not the brake lever or cables. A “perfect split” is too creepy. Have a life, too.
You won’t come close unless you’re at least 20 feet away, and at the right height.
4. We don’t put valves at 6:00, catalog-style. That’s too weird, too studio-y! 4.5: Shoot in open shade, like outside in shade, so there are no shadows. IF you’re going for clear-clean image, that is.
5. The crop lines shown are good. If the bike is truly the subject, you don’t need to show the lake in the woods over to the side
