Triumph motorcycle photoshoot on location.

I had this idea of a motorcycle photo shoot in the fields in my mind for quite some time now and just a few days ago I have managed to put all the things together and now I can share a few words about it with you.

In my head, I knew exactly what I want and when I found out that my friend Martin Bella just bought this beautiful and very classic Triumph motorcycle I knew I have to take advantage of it.

So I contacted him right away and he was more than happy to help me with the project. He also agreed to pose for me which was absolutely fantastic. Now I only had to worry about one more model. The very next day I started to scout for a good location. I know that if it comes to location in London, there will be lots of problem from the start. Mainly because every where you go you need a permit or pay lots of money for it. So the only solution is to find some place outside of London. I have spent a few hours in the car driving around and found a great location in Lakeside just a few miles from East London with lots of open space, high grass and a bridge in the background and also it was very close to my studio which was very convenient for everyone.

Photo Equipment.

I was going for one particular look and I decided to use only one light source,  Elinchrom Ranger RX with large octa and plenty of sunlight.  Octa gives you this very pleasing and soft light which is perfect for what I wanted to do. I had my assistant holding the light mounted on the monopod so was very easy for him to manoeuvre and move around with it. I also had 0.9ND filter from Lee Filters on my lens which gives me this 3 extra stops to kill the ambient and throw the background out of focus. With everything in place and ready to go there was only one thing missing. The sunlight. The sky was full of clouds with the sun coming and going every few seconds playing with my exposure. The plan was to have very bright and sunny pictures and instead we end up with very moody images. But hey, when you are going for a photo shoot on the location you have to be ready for every situation and just deal with it. In the end, we were very happy with the images and glad that there was no rain…

Problems.

For those of you who have never done a shoot on the location with the lights, there are a few things you may want to remember.

Well, for a start you are limited to your camera shutter speed which is 1/160 and you are left with F-stop and ISO to play with. Your shutter is being replaced with the power of your strobe and if you want to underexpose your sky you want to make sure that your light will give you enough power to lit the subject.

To underexpose the sky you have to set the camera to let say F11, F16 and by doing it the whole image will get much darker and that is including your subject. Once you set your background exposure, you have to fire the light on the subject and that is the time when the power of the strobe is important.

So if you are on maximum power, and still have not enough light there are a few things you can do. Number one – come with the light source closer to the subject. Number two – change the setting on your camera and sacrifice the sky by overexposing it. Number three – avoid the sky. Compose your image without including the sky in it…

Below image without using a strobe.

and here is the one with the strobe.

Behind the scene video.

I knew that this will be a very interesting subject to shoot so I asked my friend Pavel Prijma if he would be interested to do some behind the scene video. I love the quality of his work and I highly recommend him for any job.  To see more of his work just click on the link.

Also, many of you may know that a good picture is not a work of just one photographer but the whole team. Every person involved in the shoot is a part of it, and I would like to say a big thank you to Kasia Bober, Martin Bella, Pavel Prijma, Michal Gutowski and Sandor Nadasdi to be part of this one.

Photoshoot dream team…

To see more of my work just click on the link.