Motorcycles are the epitome of rugged, cool, and edgy. How many times have you thought about clicking a cool picture of your machine when coming across bike pictures in your favourite magazine, Instagram, forums, and websites? Are you obsessed about motor racing photography too? Photography equipment is now easily accessible and can be purchased without burning a hole in the pocket. Clicking a great picture of your motorbike doesn’t demand you to spend a lot of costly equipment.
Equipment needed:
You don’t have to get a complex looking DSLR camera if you aren’t comfortable with it. In that case, all you need is a pretty decent camera where you can control the aperture settings and shutter speed to click amazing motorbike pictures. It should have decent megapixels and clear focus. A camera with high megapixels would pick more details and the final image looks better.
Clean Your Bike: Make your bike appear clean and appealing. If you want others to see how attractive your bike is, ensure the paint job is prominent. It is understandable if you want to flaunt off the road dust from your recent road trip but ensure it doesn’t look too dusty.
Take care of the framing: Your prime focus is to shift the observer’s entire attention on your bike. Pictures that are taken about a mile away from the object/person of focus or has more empty space wouldn’t be eye-catching. Set your bike in a nice angle that would make add depth to the photo.
Nice background: Too often haven’t you been photo-bombed by a passerby when you were trying to click a picture? It is important to decide on a neat background. Every other person or object in your picture’s background would serve as a distraction. Make sure the frame covers only the general scenery and your bike.
Lighting: Bad lighting is going to break the entire look. The natural light is too harsh at noon so try it either during the morning or late afternoon. Matte bikes especially look dull in direct sunlight.
If you are going capture clicks of motorbike racing, the pictures must be well-timed and require speed in your part. Capture perfect shots of motorbikes in motion by paying attention to the following technical details.
- Show motion: When you want to show your vehicle in motion choosing slow shutter speed is the trick. Place your camera on a tripod and set the mode to Tv or S and shutter speed to be 1/250.
- Panning technique: This technique results in a sharp picture with a blurred background suggesting motion. The shutter speed should be 1/250.
- wide-angle lens: Racing events require wide-angle lens to capture the entire scenario sharply. Wideness around 28mm or less and an aperture of f/11-f/32 are ideal.
- Zoom in: The zoom feature can be applied before the race starts to capture an image of race bikes lined up before the race starts. A powerful lens picks more detail and has a better zoom-in feature.
Work with the different options available and experiment a little to get the perfect shot. With sufficient practice, you are going to be a pro in capturing pictures.