Very impressive. Nice photos too! They do indeed draw me into the trip. (Dang, I wish I wasn't sitting here at work.)

Thanks for the follow-up.

Thanks for all of the reactions – we will use them in writing the upcoming articles, interviews and photo tips. The tips will mainly be covering bicycle touring and will hopefully give cyclists new ideas on how to take bike pictures.



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The are tons of sites that already cover the basics, the techniques, the technology. Shooting on bike tour is subject to the same rules as any other photography. What makes it different is that the size, weight, battery life and storage/protection matter more to a cyclist. As some posters pointed above useful tips for touring cyclists would include addressing of the above issues: type of equipment that works best for a touring cyclists, weight to quality ratio, tips for keeping the batteries charged up, alternative power sources, equipment storage and protection, how to edit and get the images up to blogs and forums easy and quickly, how to backup your images so you don't lose them by the time you're back home, etc.

Here are basic rules that I try to follow, although in reality it is often hard to follow rules if the timeframe for the shot is brief, if you're tired, etc.

Never put your primary subject dead in the center unles it serves a clear purpose.

Lookup the rule of thirds and use it.

Try not to have your human and animal subjects look staright in the lens.

Don't shoot from eye's height, try lower or higher.

Learn about depth of field and bokeh and experiment with them.

Trim or stitch panoramas for gereater visual impact.

Middle of the day is the worts time for shooting due to harsh shadows, morning and afternoon light is the best.

Be mindful of lightning: you're not taking images, you're capturing light. Look for lights and shadows, move around and frame your subject according to the light.

Don't shoot with the sun or other strong lights in the background of your subject, unless you're going for that special effect.

Take the same shot at various settings for higher changes of getting it right.

Don't be afraid of noise if you have access to decent software, most noise can be easily removed or reduced in most graphics apps, the higher shutter speed is often worth shooting at higher ISO and higher noise. In the worst case you can convert to B&W and still have a great "keeper" shot.

Shoot a lot and then shoot some more, the more you shoot the higher your chances are of getting good shots. I keep maybe 10% of my photos.

Experiment, often the best shots are experimental or lucky shots.

Post-editing, the images you see on National Geographic didn't come out of the camera like that.

Adam

PS. How to take the shots of yourself ona bike!

Grace this is a wonderful idea! I'm setting off in two weeks on a 4,000 mile/4,000 photo bike and photography project called PhotoBike and will be watching for the article(s) you write regarding touring and photography.

In planning my trip, my primary concern has been carrying film (about 60 rolls?) and my equipment. I purchased an Arkel Big Bar Bag to keep all three of my cameras--digital point and shoot, 35mm film, and Holga 120 format, within easy reach. The bag is also waterproof, from what I've read, but I will still keep the gear in plastic bags. As far as tips on composition, I'm not so much interested in that as each photographer can find her own style. For power I'm taking a rollable solar panel from SolarFilm and a charger that plugs into the cigarette lighter adapter attached to the solar panel. I've had to cut down on some equipment to accommodate the film's bulk, but you could always send some of the film to someone halfway through the ride and switch out spent for new rolls then.

You can see the details on the PhotoBike project at www.ninasbuick.com, and I'll be posting regular updates as well as photos from the tour as I go along. Looking forward to seeing your article!

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Are the cameras you mentioned small enough to carry them all in one handlebar bag? I found one DSLR (Canon 40D) with two lenses to be quite a burden to carry. I've sent the 100mm macro lens back home after few days, just kept the 17-55mm lens for the reminder of the tour. They would only fit in panniers and that made them hard to get out. And 60 rolls of film?! That's a lot!

my best suggestion when friends ask me "canon or nikon" (especially) is .... choose a camera whose interface is something you LIKE.

the greatest whiz bang camera with controls an individual cannot adapt to, is a failure. would be better to pair up with a camera that works for the individual.

I agree with you. What we will try and do is talk about the rules and tips / hints and show alongside a bicycle picture that illustrates what we are talking about. For instance you write; That’s an excellent rule – especially on flat terrain, yet I almost never see bicycle touring pictures taken from a high or low standpoint.

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Nina’s buick – sounds like a fantastic trip! I’ve already “liked” you page via facebook – and I’m curious to see how the trip goes. We also used to carry so much film with us in our pre-digital camera days.

You might also want to read this article from photographer Chris Herwig – who on his bike trip – he took a photo for every hour that he was on his bike. http://herwigphoto.wordpress.com/200...7/road-apples/

I second the shoot from different heights suggestion. Grace, I'll be following your work and would love to provide some feedback during my trip on bike touring and photography. If you have any specific questions that I could help answer, don't hesitate to send them along via the facebook page or the 'contact me' box on the webpage.

I will definitely check out Chris Herwig's blog! I've been toying with the idea of a routinized schedule of photos--one per mile, one per hour, anyone have other suggestions?--as a way to provide structure to the project. With creative projects, such structure often leads to creativity that may not have appeared if there were no rules. This is an argument against free verse poetry, too! One photo per hour is a kind of photography haiku, no? Structure is especially attractive for the Holga, which takes quite distinctive pictures with little predictability. Imposing external rules would take away some of the angst of controlling a temperamental technology. Perhaps I will limit the Holga to portraits of people I meet along the way. Could be fun.

AdamDZ, I'm not taking a DSLR, choosing instead my Panasonic LX3 point-and-shoot. It's a great camera, not least of which because it has a simple toggle switch to change from 16:9 landscape aspect ratio to 4:3 that simulates 35mm pretty well. Most of my landscape work is done in 16:9, and you can see examples here. The camera is quite compact, much smaller than my Nikon FE2 35mm SLR. The Holga is a bit boxy, but it's simple plastic and incredibly lightweight.

Beautiful images!

Speaking of "trying higher" I would love to take a small RC quad-copter on a tour and shoot aerial photos using a small camera. Or maybe even just a balloon. Wouldn't it be awesome to have shots of yourself on a bike from bird's eye view?!

BTW, I love panoramas. They have greater impact IMHO, because they're more natural since our vision is panoramic. I stitch multiple images, it's also a way to compensate for the lack of very wide lens.

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Fantastic panoramas, AdamDZ! In my few attempts at stitching, I've found the clouds difficult to get right. Yours look perfect!

The deviantArt community has groups devoted to panoramas and high-dynamic range (is that what HDR stands for?) panorama photography. Many users are friendly and willing to share tutorials and tricks of the trade on how they make their images. I highly recommend it if you're not already a part!

Maybe the software I use is better (Autopano Pro), but also, you need to shoot your images quickly to give objects little chance to move between frames. On a windy day it's more difficult (clouds, trees, bushes, tall grass, etc.).

You can also create panoramas by cropping a regular picture too. If you're going to post your 10+ megapixel picture on the net then you have to re-size it to make it much smaller anyway. Then some cropping and resizing won't be a problem. This also gives you the opportunity to "re-frame" your subject. I usually save my images as 1920x1200 from 3000+ pixels so I often re-frame the photos.

Example:

Original, normal-sized image before cropping and re-framing:

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After cropping and re-framing, the image lost some pixels but since the resulting image is a lot smaller anyway, it doesn't matter:

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