Helpful Tips to Take Better Photos on Your Motorcycle Trip
I by no means claim to be a professional photographer but if you’ve perused the photos on my FaceBook and on this website you’ll see that they’re at least appealing to the eye and memorable. These are the rules I follow when taking that shot to remind me of the adventures I experienced for many years to come.
And fortunately these tips can be helpful when using your phone camera as well. That’s all I use!
And fortunately these tips can be helpful when using your phone camera as well. That’s all I use!
Rule 1: Eliminate Distraction
This step is very simple. We know the subject of this photo is my hammock and motorcycle. Instead of focusing on that, look around the frame of the subject for any items that take away from the photo. That can be any brightly colored objects, trash, signs, branches, shadows, and other partial objects. Also make sure to check behind your subject, especially if it’s your bike. If you can, remove the objects yourself. If not, try taking a few steps left, right, forward or backwards. Don’t be scared to kneel down or stand on top of something. Also try to avoid having your shadow in the frame. You’ll see a big improvement on the focus of your photo by doing this.
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Rule 2: The Rule of Thirds
The misunderstood and very simple concept of the rule of thirds is a quick way to take appealing pictures without much effort. When framing your photo use these lines as guidelines to line up your shot. Put things like the horizon on the horizontal lines while putting the subject matter in one of the cross hairs. Avoid putting the subject directly in the center of the photo.
Rule 3: Crop
You’re so caught up in the spectacular moment that you didn’t pay attention to the rules. A simple way to fix this is to crop the photo before showing it to friends. Here I made the photo follow the rule of thirds and it makes it much more appealing to the eye.
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Rule 4: Lead the eye into the photo
Especially with your motorcycle it’s real easy to make sure your bike points into the photo. You want to lead the eye into the photo where other subjects might be, like mountains. With the first photo you look away from the photo by looking at the bike whereas the second photo it leads you to looking at me in my hammock.
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Rule 5: Take many photos, share a few
In the digital age we can snap away as many times as we want and it doesn’t cost us a penny. So snap a few extra and when you stop to send them to friends choose just the best ones. I’ve personally taken many photos that bring back a feeling but aren’t good photos. I keep those to myself.
Rule 6: Back it up!
Especially if you’re traveling overseas, and even in the US, back your photos up! You never know when that unfortunate accident will happen and you lose your phone or it’s destroyed. Try using the cloud, Google Drive, or simply stopping to use a computer and add them to a flash drive.
Rule 7: Lighting
This is the most complicated of all rules. The easiest way I can give advice for this is this: you want the light above or behind you. Avoid light facing you. The best lighting of the day is sunrise and sunset. You can see here when I was working on my Grand Canyon sunset photos some of them came out too dark. Most phones have an auto adjust feature that you can activate by tapping the screen. If you tap a dark area, it’ll increase how much light the lens takes in. If you tap a light place, it’ll reduce how much light gets taken in. Try playing around with it until you get the right amount to make your subject look good.
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Thanks for reading! Please check out my other articles and photos on this website! Feel free to let me know what you think!
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