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www. FavoriteRidesAndDestinations. com | ridermagazine. com

SPRING 2017 ISSUE 01 / VOL. 02

BY MARK TUTTLE

button— it’ s a process that combines a working knowledge of your camera’ s abilities with the skill, creativity and patience to properly light, compose, focus and expose your image. The more you practice combining and cooking up all of these ingredients to make your images, the better they will turn out, and making them will become faster and easier.

WHETHER YOU’ RE an aspiring contributor to Rider magazine or just want to have the best possible visual memories from your motorcycle adventures, these 10 tips will help you make better photographs. Notice that I said“ make” rather than“ take” better photos. Creating good images involves more than snapping a shutter

The river shot could be improved by angling the bike the other way so that it ' s not backlit and we can see some detail in it, like the mountain shot.

The key ingredient in any photo is not the subject, but light. Without light, there is darkness. Use light like you might use paint to color your subject and fill in dark areas. The most important lighting skill is to“ front light” your subject, i. e. the light source( most often the sun) is behind or coming from the photographer, shining onto the subject.“ Back lighting,” when the light is shining toward the camera, is appropriate for moody shots, sunset silhouettes, etc., but most good scenic and motorcycle images are front lit. If the subject must be backlit( by a window or the sun, for example), try forcing your camera’ s flash to fire in order to“ fill” in the subject( flash fill). The flash strength is often adjustable on digital cameras. Choosing and / or positioning your subject and background for good lighting goes handin-glove with our next tip: composition.