I found this burnt out bike last year, it’s in a big park that I visit all the time to walk the dog. I like exploring around the periphery and there is some abandoned ground next to some trees in the far corner, and it’s usually good for finding the old discarded items that I like to photograph. It’s at the end of the narrow path next to the fence that I found the bike, tucked out of site, so you have to walk right up to it to realise it’s there.
I took a quick photo, but the lighting wasn’t quite right, it’s very flat low contrast, and when processed in black & white, everything just seems to merge into one overall tone of grey. Plus I had recently made a whole blog post all about abandoned motorbikes, so thought from now on, I’ll only post any I find if I’m really pleased with the photo. Also I don’t think anyone really walks down to this spot, so I wasn’t worried about the bike being removed anytime soon.
Fast forward to February this year and I think I’ll check back in, and see if it’s still there, and it is. The only difference is someone has propped it upright against a tree. Weirdly I find that if I spot one of these bikes and it’s on it’s side, when I come back, someone has almost always propped it up vertically, is there an urge to right it that needs to be fulfilled? Or does it just look neater that way?
It’s an overcast day, and it’s 10-15 minutes after sunset, so the light is already low. This time there is a light from the factory nearby, which is an older style lamp, so it has a real yellow cast to the light, which is softly illuminating the bike through the trees. This photo is at the absolute limits of shooting handheld, 1/30s, f/2, ISO 3200. But the final photo almost looks as if it was taken in golden hour, which I find really strange.
I had a torch with me, and thought I would try using that to illuminate the bike, which gives the final photo a completely different look, even though the camera settings are the exact same. They have been edited, but not drastically.
I don’t really like shooting at ISO 3200 (though I’m always surprised how usable the results are) as they tend to start getting really noisy when editing, especially when pulling shadows. I managed to get back a week or so later with a tripod this time, trying to time it like before at blue hour, but before it gets fully dark. I wanted some shadows for contrast, but not completely black.
This time I bought my led light and mini tripod, which meant I could get some precision to the direction of the off camera light, and tried a few different options.
I tried illuminating the whole bike from the side, which gave a nice contrast.
But I think my favourite is the one illuminating it from just behind the tree on the left, which throws up all of these unusual shadows. You’ll notice I stuck with the same composition for all of these, this is partly out of necessity, it’s pretty thick with trees and there aren’t too many other angles available. But I did like this framing, and I thought it would be interesting to keep it consistent and then I have a direct comparison between each differing style.
Similar exposure, but because I now have the tripod I could slow down to 0.5 s, ISO 400, f/2 (I still wanted that shallow depth of field)
