Biker 'Grunge' shoot Taunton.

Well, keen to get a shoot in as I have been quite busy with so many other things lately, I made it to join a few photographer friends with models in Taunton this weekend. As ALL shoots are now for me a learning opportunity and to boot a learning blog opportunity I shall put down my thoughts and results here.

We started out at noon, so we had a mixture of hard and diffused sun light to use, there was broken cloud so things were quickly changing. I opted to use my FX DSLR and for the most part to use a fixed focal length lens, a 50mm f1.4 nikkor lens. Using this lens for a few reasons

1) The fixed focal length makes me think more about composition and especially my own positioning and angles.
2) The lens is very fast, opens up to f1.4 and I just love pictures taken like this, for me its a similar effect to true eyesight that is a narrow area of focus and the shots often look quite vivid.
3) Its a great lens, not crazy sharp wide open and for this I wanted a little softness.
4) I wanted to avoid distortion if possible

As for camera set up

1) I was a little lazy with white balance, the shifting light made me switch this to auto. I wont have time to keep switching.
2) Same goes for exposure, usually im a full manual man, but quick shifting models and ambient light? I opted for A priority today.
3) ISO? Hmm, it did cross my mind to purposefully whack this up to 1600 to induce noise, fashion style. But, no, I decided to change my mind to keep the sharp lines on the chopper noise free, so 100 in the light and 200 in the shadow.

The first model rocked up on a proper american style chopper bike..brilliant! its a deep red colour as is her lipstick..Im already thinking cross processing the shots to highlight these wonderful colours. After a few frames however, I also start thinking about some of these being mono (black and white) which given the colorful background of street graffiti may seem an odd choice but there is a dark element to biker grunge too so I took a few with mono in mind. Im looking for quirky angles and sexy looks, Im thinking front cover of 'Back street heroes' as I shoot and direct the models. We move around a little and end up under the fly over for some final shots where I decide to mix hard and soft by putting the rock dressed model amongst some gorgeous pink flowers and shooting again with a very shallow depth of field, cross process...lovely.

My self critique, I think i went too shallow on the DOF in some shots, focusing was tough and my focus points are a little off in some shots, not to the detriment of the effect but...could try harder! I need to pause for thought more often and consider my settings.

So I guess you want to see some samples huh?

Set up: Nikon D700. Lenses used. 50mm f1.4, 85mm f1.4(MF) and 24-70mm f2.8

1) 50mm, f1.4, 1/8000sec, ISO200