WHY WE LOVE TO PHOTOGRAPH OUR BIKES
I’m going to ask you a question – and you must answer honestly. Is the screen saver on your mobile or laptop an image of your family – maybe your wife or husband, or possibly the kids on holiday – or is it your bike? Now scroll through the most recent 50 images on your phone. Are these photos of your dog, perhaps, or a family event? Or are they mainly your bike in different locations? You can see where I’m going with this can’t you?
We are obsessed with photographing of our bikes. I found some old prints the other day taken long ago on a throwaway camera, and 80% of the images were of my old and beloved Honda CBR600. No family, friends or girlfriend… Just the bike.
Today we all have camera phones far more capable and efficient than those old wind-on cameras with film. And now it’s also ridiculously easy to share images via myriad social media channels. I share pics of my Honda Fireblade with mates in New Zealand without even thinking about it. We all do it: park up in a stunning location, get the bike positioned just so, drop onto one knee for a funky angle, click and share… instantaneously and globally. It’s addictive, satisfying and, simply, what we do.
I’ve been professionally road-testing bikes for 20 years and have worked with the world’s best motorcycle photographers in locations as diverse as Douglas and Dubai, yet I still get an overwhelming urge to take a snap myself. Could be a glorious Sunday blast in the Dales or outside a café on a wet Wednesday afternoon in Leeds – it’s phone out for quick snap of the Blade. I can’t help it.
It’s not just me; it’s all of us. How often do you round a corner to find fellow riders enthusiastically organising an impromptu shoot with their bikes? Every weekend my social media is flooded by my friends’ with-bike selfies. Off-road, on road, sports bikes or commuters, we all love to take a pic of the bike.
The eternal problem, of course, is that it’s fiendishly hard to get a decent image of you and your bike actually moving. Unless you know or employ a pro’ photographer the dream action shot of you and your bike flowing as one on your favourite road remains just that. Which is why Honda linked up with specialist bike snappers BikerPics over the August bank holiday to enable hundreds of Honda owners to get a professional action picture of them and their bike. For free.
To find out how it worked, the Blade and I headed out to the A537 Cat and Fiddle, one of ten specially chosen locations available over the weekend, for a gloriously sunny round trip of close to 160 miles. Photo-shoots for websites and bike mags are an integral part of my working week but I still get excited before a shoot, so the day before I cleaned the Fireblade and made sure my helmet and jacket were fly-free. As usual, I checked the weather forecast and sussed out my destination on Google Maps.
BikerPics were scheduled to take images between 9am and 3pm at a location near the famous Cat and Fiddle Inn. Running late, the first stint of my journey was rather dull (M62 to the M1), then west to Chesterfield while remembering the countless speed cameras. Out of Chesterfield on the A619, I headed for Bakewell then simply followed signs to Buxton.
I opted not to use a SatNav, instead deploying old fashioned instinct, while if I saw a promising looking road I just went for it. So, yes, I did get a little lost, but also stumbled upon a nice little coffee shop… such is the charm of exploring. In hindsight I should have used the BikerPics app to easily find the location, and fitted my iPhone to my bike – why do we make life so hard sometimes!
Before long I was onto the Cat and Fiddle pass, which is now heavily policed with average speed cameras. It’s a shame but understandable as I remember this route back in the day when it was a notorious accident hot spot. But today it was alive with fellow Honda owners out for a bank holiday blast and, like me, hoping to catch the eye of the BikerPics lensman.
Sure enough, just after the Cat and Fiddle Inn I spotted Alex from BikerPics standing on the outside of a sweeping but safe left-hander. I did my best to look good while holding a constant speed in a gap in the traffic to make it easier for Alex to take a clean, uncluttered shot. A quick turnaround and a return for a second fly-by – and that was it.
Sipping a brew at the inn, I took a moment to reflect on how easy the process had been. When I was a teenager I rode to and fro past my hapless mate and his cheap instamatic camera for hours trying to get a half-decent action shot. On the days he remembered to remove the lens cap, the results were truly shocking: a blurred micro-dot that looked more like a UFO sighting than a motorcycle. But today, thanks to Honda, it was done by a professional outfit whose free-to-download images would shortly be online.
The promise of a pin-sharp action shot of me and my Blade added a real sense of purpose to my riding weekend. A couple of days later I downloaded my images and was delighted with the results, especially as Alex captured me riding both ways, too. I could have done a few more passes or gone for some race leathers and attempted to look a bit racier but he has a tough job shooting thousands of bikes each day, and won't photograph anyone riding illegally or without due care and attention. How good is my image? Well, it’s my screen saver this week.
As mentioned, I wasn’t the only one to take Honda up on their kind offer. On the Cat and Fiddle there was a steady stream of bikes passing Alex, and according to BikerPics they managed to grab nearly 3000 images of Honda riders. Alex wasn’t just at the Cat and Fiddle, other similar stunning locations varied from the Brecon Beacons to Hawes in North Yorkshire as Honda owners took the opportunity to capture their bike in motion.
That is an incredible number of pictures, over several locations – Alex and his team were busy. It’s fascinating to see bike images being uploaded to social media, everything from Fireblades to Goldwings, even the odd 125 and scooter. It feels like we all came together for one goal. I wonder how many screen savers have been changed. Or how many images have been printed and now sit proudly at home? Has the kid's school photo been replaced by a BikerPic?
What makes a good picture? We asked top pro Jonathan Jacob
“Two wheels are very different to shooting four wheels, there is much more going on with movement and the rider. You can capture the lean, the sense of speed, the feeling the rider is having whilst riding.
“It’s important to match the bike to the surroundings and the rider. You wouldn’t have a scooter on a racetrack in race leathers, match the bike to the background.
“Then think about composition, where the bike sits in the frame, it doesn’t have to bang in the middle of the picture. Is the bike riding into or out of the frame? Where is your eye going? Is the bike small with a winding road ahead, pictured somewhere picturesque and inspiring? Or is the bike cropped, all you can see is the front ¼ of the bike on a racetrack.”
Most of us will be taking static pictures of our bikes, so here are Jonathan’s top tips for a static image.
- Ideally, you want to shoot on a long lens, but this depends on your phone or camera. But the longer the lens the better. This make the bike sharp, blurs out the background to make the bike stand out.
- Avoid shooting into the light. Ideally, make sure the sun is behind you or to the side.
- Choose your bike's best side, this might be the exhaust side, or if the bike has a single side swing-arm it may not be the exhaust side.
- Be led by your bike. An adventure bike on grass, a sports bike in pit lane, etc.…
- Most people think the best light is mid-day in summer, but it’s not. In summer either early in the morning or late in the evening when the sunlight is lower.
- We view the world from 1.5m to 2m so chose a different height. With a camera phone you can get down really low, and again remember the composition and the bike doesn’t have to be in the middle.
- Clean. We spend more time cleaning bikes than we do photographing.
- Preparation, taking test shots, trying angles, compositions. At first, you’ll take hundreds of shots before you get it right.
How to look good in pictures
The key to a good picture is to look like you are doing a 100mph, when in fact you’re actually doing 20mph. Remember: nobody knows how fast you were riding when they look at a picture.
When you ride fast or aggressively it’s much harder for the photographer to capture the image. Smooth and slow is the key. A constant radius corner is preferable as it gives the photographer enough time to ‘frame’ the bike and rider.
The rider has to make the photographer's job as easy as possible – then look fast whilst riding slowly. In racing you want to be on the edge of the tyre for as little time as possible, as you can’t brake or accelerate when you are lent over, but it’s the opposite for motorcycle photography. Ideally, you want to be carrying some lean angle past the photographer but not too much – looking relaxed and stylish counts too.
Before setting up a shot, take a moment to evaluate the safety of the area. Keep to the speed limit and opt for a high gear because in a still photograph, nobody knows if you are second gear or top, so why draw attention to yourself by riding in first or second gear. And, of course, ride to the conditions, be they wet, cold or damp.
Then look at the location. Is it photogenic? Is there too much traffic? Where can the photographer safely park and position themself? Ideally, the photographer needs to be 10m to 20m back from the corner or further, and won’t want anything like lampposts, fences, bushes or trees in the way. Finally, what is the light like? Is it dark under trees, is it worth waiting an hour for the clouds to clear? There is a lot to think about and is not as easy as you might think…
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