Portrait of a Motorcycle Racer

8/15/10 – Rebecca Getsfrid – Commercial Portrait Photographer in Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon

I consider one of my best selling points to be the fact that I can take even the crappiest of locations and do something cool with them. I’ve been shooting a bit of personal work to advertise that fact a bit harder; You may have noticed a bit of it in my last post.

This time, I met up with amateur motorcycle racer Collin Spittal to create some awesome shots of him and his bike.

This was the location, as would be seen by the naked eye:

Not the prettiest yard ever. I’m shooting at f/4 1/20th (completely over exposing the lights) to show what I would be dealing with had I shot a natural light here. It’s a mess. A lot of bushes, a lot of ugly browns, all in all just not an attractive location for a badass biker.

I’ve got two real options to fix the location: Blur it. Darken it.

Alien Bees B800 through Shoot Through umbrella, on axis and slightly above. B800 with 40 degree grid in back, camera left
The first I accomplish by having the subject get in riding position and dragging the shutter down to 1/15th of a second. Before I hit the shutter button, I start zooming, and I continue zooming until the exposure is complete. This has the effect of turning everything not struck by the flashes into a nice streaky motion blur. You can still pick up on some of the weeds and such if you go looking for them, but for being in a backyard, it really does give you the impression that the bike is in motion, speeding down some dirty old road. The centering of the subject at the edge of the tree line was intended to kind of split the frame in half. I’m not sure if I like the end result as much as I thought I would at the time of capture.


Alien Bees B800 through shoot through umbrella camera right, B800 through 40 degree grid camera left. ABR800 Ring flash on axis

You can achieve the similar motion-y result from the side by simply panning the camera as you shoot. In this case, I tightened up the aperture and powered up the lights to add a bit of drama and make it look more like he was simply driving past houses at night. The original lighting setup was intended for the shot from the front, so I also added the ABR800 ring flash on the lens to bring some more fill light into the image.


Alien Bees B800 through shoot through umbrella, camera left, B800 through 40 degree grid behind subject’s head, ABR800 Ring Flash on ground camera right

For my favorite shot of the night, I threw out the motion blur gimmick and just focused on making a good well-lit portrait. I used the treeline as a framing device, and cloned out a power line that was running through his neck. I knew it would be an issue at the time of capture, but didn’t want to sacrifice the rest of the composition to get rid of it. With more aggressive photoshop work, it can also look good against all black:



Lastly, I shot a quick helmetless portrait, because that’s what I do.


Alien Bees B800 through shoot through umbrella camera right, B800 through grid behind subject in frame

Depending on the situation and the client, I really like to put the backlight in frame and get a bit of flare out of it. This isn’t the standard ‘pretty’ flare I get from the 16-50/2.8, but it’s got a neat grungy feel to it that I like. Of course, I shot one without the flare as well by moving so that the light was fully obscured by the subject’s head.