A Night with Harley – Stuck in Customs

A Night with Harley

My Unexpected 24-70mm Usage

As a landscape photographer, I tend to go wide-angle a lot… Actually, I don’t particularly “like” (not facebook-like, like-like) being called a “landscape photographer” — but I know people like to categorize, and it’s better than being called a “underwear tester”.

So back to the wide-angle bit. I love my Nikon 14-24 lens… and when I go on trips, I expect to use that the most! However, I notice that this current photo-adventure in Iceland, I am using my 24-70 most of the time. About 70% of the time! I find it gets me the compression and framing I need for so many landscape situations.

I’ll have to add more photos soon to my Nikon 24-70 Review here on the site… but it is a very versatile lens!

Daily Photo – A Night with Harley

These bikes are really a fun subject for photography. I get excited every time I head out for one of these events. There are so many styles, customizations, and characters behind them… you never see the same thing twice.

Setting up for these photos is also somewhat of a fun challenge. Getting the right “background” is very important to me… sometimes it just does not work out, so I have to move on and leave a pretty bike alone. The other thing about these bikes, which you don’t realize until you take thousands of photos of them, is that you probably only have a 12.5% chance of getting a good composition and background. I break it down thusly:

  • 50% chance that the bike is on its kick stand and leaning the direction you want.  These are just too hard to shoot from the downward-leaning side.
  • Compounded by a 50% chance the background area is boring, distracting, inappropriate, or otherwise unpalatable
  • Compounded by another 50% chance that the bike will be blocked by another bike, since these tend to travel in flocking patterns, like their riders.

HDR-Photo