Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/810045
2. Maintain Your Composition Snapshots of bikes and people preserve a moment in time, but without good composition they are only interesting to the subject(s), the photographer and maybe the police. Arrange the bikes and/or riders in the scene to create interest (bring a tripod if you're alone and put yourself in your images, too). No one wants to see 40 photos of someone with his or her bike without enough of the background included in some to make them interesting. Rather than centering the bike in the composition, position it off to one side, back up a little and include more of that interesting building, mountain scene or ghost town in the frame. 3. Focus Pocus Most digital cameras will let you set focus on the bike or subject in the foreground to make sure it's sharp, then recompose the image while you continue holding the shutter button halfway down to keep the plane of focus locked on the main subject. Once you have the composition you want, squeeze the shutter gently—don't snap it—to avoid unwanted camera movement. No one likes blurry images. Make yours sharp by using a high enough shutter speed. Unless you're shooting on a tripod or your camera has an image stabilizer, a good rule of thumb for still subjects is to use a speed double or more in number than the focal length of the lens. For example, if you're shooting with a 70mm lens, you need to set the shutter to at least 1/140th of a second. Don't be afraid of the manual side of the settings dial— in fact you should use it most of time. 4. That's Really Deep To achieve good sharpness throughout your image it helps to imagine focus as a flat plane, like a sheet of glass, parallel to the camera back that moves toward and away from the camera as you adjust the focus. You can control the effective depth of that plane by changing the lens aperture. Larger aperture numbers equate to smaller aperture openings and provide more "depth of field"—deeper planes of focus. So if you want to get everything in the foreground of your image just as sharp as the background, try using a smaller aperture (larger number, f8, f11, f16, etc.). To make your subject sharp but blur the background for emphasis, use a larger aperture (smaller number, like f4). TOURING TIPS 10 Photography Tips for Your Next Long Ride 4 2 photo by kevin wing 3 photo by kevin wing www.FavoriteRidesAndDestinations.com | ridermagazine.com PAGE 90 SPRING 2017 ISSUE 01 / VOL. 02