Tips needed: Portraits of people and their cycles

dubcat

dubcat

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Amir
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Hi, I am running the Virgin London Marathon this year and have committed to raising a substantial amount of money for charity. One idea I had in order to raise this money is to offer portrait shots to members of my cycling club of them and their pride and joy.

I have never taken pictures of people and their bikes before! I don't want to make this any harder than it already is so I am going to propose that I take static shots of them beside their bike or of them in their cycling gear looking sporty. Here are a couple of examples I found on the web (not my work!):

http://abacusphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/marcus-cyclist.html
http://defriscostudio.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/bike-messengers-being-shot-in-denver_26.html
http://nixphoto.net/2012/07/24/happy-tuesday-bike-portraits/ (second and fourth ones).

Does anyone have any tips for me? Backgrounds, lighting, perspective, composition, anything that relates specifically to the challenge at hand? Any inspiration you can provide would help me to raise money for disabled kids.

Cheers,
Dub
 
The first ones look good, but only the ones on the road, the ones on the grass look out of context - a roadie rarely goes off road. The last one is brilliant and I don't think the landscap one of him cycling stood up towards you would be too hard if they cycled slowly?

One idea might be too get them to hold the bike over there shoulder?

Would love to see the results when youre done!
 
I don't have any specific tips, but I love this BikeNYC project. Natural light and backgrounds that relate to the subject. Shot with a 50mm, 85mm and 135mm f2, I believe.
 
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I've no idea how best to approach this but being a keen cyclist as well as my camera interest makes this thread an interesting one for me

How many cyclist are you going to "shoot" ?

Are you going for the same shot in each case? Could you compose one and then put some discrete chalk marks on the ground and tell each cyclist to place their wheels on said mark and get the shots real quick or is that too much of a production line ? Just a thought
 
mrgas no idea on numbers yet, have not approached the club yet. I want to have an idea of how I will shoot this before I approach them so that I can get them to tell people about it and I am ready to satisfy the demand immediately. I would prefer to get a successful set of shots and repeat that for every cyclist - it probably won't all happen at the same time though.
 
I don't like any in the first post links... all done to death flash/daylight stuff. I love the BikeNYC project images though. Simple, editorial portraiture style, no drama or eye candy/dramatic lighting. Just well exposed, thoughtful portraits.

Then again... these shots are to raise money for charity, so I suppose the eye candy will have a broader appeal.
 
Pookey I know where you are coming from. It's like family portraits on a white background - done to death but they sell very well apparently. The objective here is to come up with a simple enough formula that a person with only very basic skills (me) can generate as much cash as possible in as short a time as possible.
 
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