Let’s face it. We all want to have great footage of our trips. Fortunately, there are a lot of choices when it comes to getting that footage. And while some will want ‘state-of-the-art’ everything, the reality is that getting that footage can be a real challenge.
Video footage requires specialized equipment and mounts for a motorcycle and/or rider. Whether mounted on a helmet or handlebars, the type of camera and the lens or lenses available will have a lot to do with your photographic result.
Photography is just one thing or element, and likely the easiest way to document your trip, but even here it depends to a great extent on not only the camera or cameras that you purchase and use but also your ability as either a photographer or videographer to capture what it is that you’re seeing. One of the greatest problems I see from a purely photographic perspective is that quantity is less important than quality. Videography compounds the complexity of making a great travel film or documentary if that be the case.
Being able to see photographically and knowing how to capture the moment based on lighting, composition, exposure, and camera angle means a great deal more than 30 minutes of staring through a windscreen while your motorcycle careens around corners. Your audience will be bored of that in 30 seconds. When it comes to videography, you only have 30 seconds to grab the attention of the viewer. If it isn’t dynamic, interesting, or evocative in some way, no one will want to sit and view it. This leads us to issues that you should decide before going out on your trip.
1) Who are your videos for?
You need to identify your audience. What is it they want to see? Good travel photography needs to follow a storyline. It needs to involve the audience and bring them inside your journey. For that, they need to have an involvement, to build a relationship with the rider. There needs to be background to the protagonist of your bike ride. If people don’t feel some sort of affinity for the rider, then it’s irrelevant where he’s going or what he’s doing.
Once you’ve developed a storyboard or storyline, you need to put some bones on it. An introduction that explains the intent of the journey, where you will go, why you’re going there, and what the sites of interest will be along the way.
2) Decide on what camera or video settings you are going to use and keep them the same throughout. If you change settings, and you’re going to compile your videos into one, then to decrease editing issues and headaches with lighting, white balance, and ISO, maintain one setting throughout.
3) This is a holiday. You’re not a professional getting paid, so ensure that you experience your trip. Get enough footage to fulfill your goals, but not at the expense of enjoying your vacation or trip. To maximize your footage, shoot under the best lighting conditions. Early morning footage and late before-sunset golden hour footage work best cinemagraphically. Good lighting provides depth, and better saturation and introduces aesthetic interest in your locations.
4) Your Story. Focus on the creation of a story that will allow for the chaos and spontaneity that you find while out shooting at the locations you stop at. Whatever your story is, have a beginning, middle, and end. Find a common theme or thread that will wind its way through your video. People like to know where the story is going.
5) Make it more about where you are and less about you. Show local interests, people, places, architecture, and history. Weave these elements together so that the experience is something that they would like to recreate.
6) Use Diversity in your shooting. Different angles, times of day or night, diversity of how you pan, use time-lapse, use movement, high or very low angles.
7) Create Motion in your videos. Filming while walking, riding, or driving are all more interesting than continuous static shots. Where you can’t create motion, or photograph things that move, be that birds or vehicles or planes. Use hyper-lapse to compress time and distance, as it adds interest and enables you to cover longer distances while walking, etc.
8) Whatever you do, stabilize your video footage. There is nothing worse than trying to watch video footage that vibrates, jiggles, or isn’t focused.
9) Use various focal lengths in your shooting to add compression or provide expansive, cinematic vistas. Using drone footage is great, but use it sparingly and intelligently. Four-minute videos of your favorite mountain will not make your film interesting or watchable.
10) Incorporate portraits of local people, especially if they are culturally interesting and different.
11) Determine how you will stitch the events together so that they flow and are connected. From an opening scene that allows an expansive view of a location, walk the viewer through your landscape by tying elements of your story and location together.
12) Refine your editing process and export it to the highest quality video you can. This simply entails knowing your equipment and software such that the settings you made at the beginning will provide you with the best optical quality for export.
13) Add dynamic sound to your videos. Can you imagine how the movie Gladiator would have looked to the audience without its soundtrack? You can subscribe to an audio program that offers, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of original songs, sounds, and environmental sounds that will create interest. In addition, if there is dialogue or narration, ensure you use either a Lavalier or shotgun mike to get the best audio. Sound that is faint or muffled will make your presentation an exercise in futility. (Thanks Michael McCook).
14) Use stock photographs at locations where great photos may already exist. This can add a sense of location to all of the places you visit.
Each of us can make interesting, evocative videos that other people will find fascinating. Remember that less is more when it comes to video. Quick clips that are well-edited and sound files that mirror the action or sounds of the environment where you were being helpful. Four minutes of titles and scrolling commentary are not.
Everyone has their photographic equipment, but I’ve found that there are a few basic, yet requisite things necessary for a good travel film. Irrespective of what make of cameras and lenses you have, focus on the basics. A solid digital camera with high resolution. It can be a cropped sensor mirrorless camera or full-frame, but the lighter, the better. For lenses, I recommend a short zoom depending on your camera’s sensor size, an ultra-wide lens with a fast aperture, a telephoto that is compact whether a fixed focal length or zoom, and an action camera for your motorcycle, preferably with multiple mounts. I use a handlebar mount and chest mount, which works well when transitioning on and off the bike.
Remember that using long video sequences of endless tarmac without context is boring, period. When you see something that is dynamic or photographically beautiful, get off the bike and shoot it. Include shots of the bike in your video footage.
Shoot using a gimbal and learn how to use your gimbal. I can’t stress this enough. Unstablized video footage is horrid and not worth watching so always stabilize your footage, either electronically or with the incorporation of a gimbal.
Finally, if you have the resources, a drone that is good optically with 4K resolution and a good 3-way gimbal is a fantastic add-on for dynamic footage.
Much more can be said about all of the elements that make motorcycle photography and video, and in the future, I’ll likely expand on those.
Ciao…
Leave a Reply