Sunday, I met up with four of my
buddies from Bay Area Photo Club to photograph something totally different from
anything that I have previous photographed—a moving motorcycle from a moving
truck. My friend, Neal Kelsoe, invited his nephew and his girl friend to be our
subjects for the photo shoot.
I had no idea what I was doing and
it showed in about 98% of the photos that I took. I knew that I wanted a blurred background and tack sharp
subjects. Little did I know that
was going to be extremely hard to do.
The truck and motorcycle were
generally moving at about the same speed—50 MPH. However, the road did not cooperate and as a result, both
the subjects and me were bouncing up and down. Studying my bad frames I noticed that a most of the blur on
my subjects was more up-and-down blur as opposed to side-to-side blur. This of course presents my dilemma how
do you eliminate the up-and-down blur while still shooting a slow enough
shutter speed to get the desired motion blur.
Any and all suggestions regarding
how I might improve on my hit rate would be most welcomed!
Thanks Neal for this humbling
experience.
Enjoy.
Camera settings: Nikon D3X, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 36mm, ISO 50, f/22 and
with shutter speeds 1/30th of second.
Post Processing:
Lightroom 3—set white and black
points, added clarity and vibrance, and adjusted hue and saturation of various
colors.
Photoshop CS5—used nik Color
Efex Pro Detail Extractor and Tonal Contrast to the bring-out details in the
subject, removed some telephone lines and pole and did some basic dodging and
burning.
I have no help for you except to say that this photo does what you wanted it to do. Love the way she looks so relaxed when by the blur you know they are motoring down the highway.
ReplyDeleteAllen
Cool photo. The time of day does not appear to be ideal since the light seems a little hard, but you did a good job on that 2%.
ReplyDeleteTaylor
A lot of details in the motorcycle and the models. The colors seem a little too intense. Otherwise really nice.
ReplyDeleteSamuel
Vivid colors make me wonder how this one would look in black and white.
ReplyDeleteTerse
I like the detail in the bike and riders but feel that there is still too much detail in the background. I wished that there was more of a blur to the background.
ReplyDeleteDebbie