Wedding Pictures

This was a little personal project. I was attending the Gold Coast Motor Bike Expo to shoot the Show Time FMX demo (pics to come shortly). During a little free time I took a wonder round the show. I wanted to take some photos of my favourite bikes on display, the trick was figuring out how to do it in the middle of a busy expo floor. So here is what I did…

I used a monopod with a tribase to support the camera instead of a tripod, so as to avoid the possiblity of anyone tripping over my equipment. To this I mounted my trusty little D40 because of its native higher sync speed of 500th of a second. Looking back I could have used my d300 and used nikons high speed sync feature – have to try that next time.

I used a sb-800 with a honl snoot to control the spread of the flash. Then I shot 3-5 images of the bike making sure my camera settings (500th of a sec at f14) killed any ambient light meaning the only thing visible in the picture was the parts of the bike lit by the flash.

Finally when I got home I combined the 3-5 different frames into a single image. The results of which are below. I wish now I had taken an ambient exposure so you could see the environment these were shot in. Another thing to remember for next time.

Pillion Passenger Wheelies

Wheelies on Fire

And this is possibly the craziest thing I have ever done.

The stunt co-oridinator, Ron, walks up to me and says we are going to film a scene where you get shot off a motorcycle. To make it look realistic we need to jerk you off the bike.

“Hmmm ok, how do we do that?”

“Simple, we attach attach one end of a rope to you, and tie the other end round that lampost there. You just have to start riding and let physics do its job!”

“ahhh….. right-o-then… sounds simple enough”

(that is Ron in the background looking real calm and relaxed)

I love black and white photography.  Your eye is free to focus on the focal point of the image when you take away the distraction of colour. Detail, composition and subject matter all appear to have more impact in a black and white image. The photos below were taken on a bright summers day, yet these three monochrome frames were my favourites of the day.