Motorcycle Drops
Saturday was grey and gloomy and not an inspiring day for taking photographs, but I thought I would try. So I took the macro out on the patio, looking for some interesting colours, which I will show in a future post or two. Right now our patio, in addition to a lot of pottery containers, is host to every parents bad dream. A 750cc motorcycle recently purchased by our teenage son, who has never ridden. He’s been talking about getting one for months, and of course a friend had a deal for him and money exchanged hands. When I was his age, it was a 1965 Harvester 3/4 ton 4×4 with an 8ft x 10ft hippy cabin on the back – every parents sweet dream as it would have been pretty well impossible to get hurt in that thing. Don’t drive too fast or shingles will peel off. Don’t drive too far because after all 16 mpg on the highway is a lot of gas. Even if gas was cheap then, so was I. Though come to think of it, parked off road, double bed in the back, girlfriend – hmmmm, maybe my parents were not so relaxed about it after all.
So, back to the present. Our patio is now crowded with this thing, which is under a tarp. I spent quite a lot of time working around it, ignoring it and the unsettling associations the idea of a bike conjur, as best I could. I was taking pictures of the splashes of colour left on some of the potted plants. Finally, I noticed the water drops on the cover and so that has become today’s post. These pictures really are of a bike, sort of (I am trying to justify the title). The last picture for instance, is a bike mirror. The others are the space around the mirror and handlebars and headlight. If you can’t tell, well, you must not be up on the developmental morphology of motorcycles. It is in the cocoon stage waiting for winter to pass and a license to be obtained. In the spring it will metamorphose back into a black and chrome streak blaaatting down the street, doppler effect and all. Leaving in its exhaust a cloud of worried parents, grim faced, biting their tongues, painfully.
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Close up shots all taken with SMC Takumar 100mm f4.0 macro screw mount (m42) lens on a Canon EOS 5D MkII. The light was rotten and the tripod was across town, so was shooting at ISO 2000, mostly at f4 and f5.6 with shutter speeds in the 1/125th to 1/250th range though some slower, some faster. Most of the pictures are pretty heavily cropped. Once again I am pleased with the relatively low noise levels for a fast ISO setting.
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burnt embers 
“Every parent’s sweet dream” – it was that TR3 we worried about not the IH truck. The truck came in useful for haymaking after we took the hippy cabin off it.
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The TR3 would shake when it got going too fast (the wire wheels needed tuning) so I never when very fast. If I had rolled it, it would have been as bad as a motorcycle accident, or worse being strapped in. The IH was a menace to other vehicles on the road, and could not go very fast. If it had full fuel tanks then it weighed too much to get going and if it had low fuel tanks then it had a range of a few hundred metres at speed.
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Pingback: Motorcycle Frost « burnt embers
I like it – great colors, composition, and textures. Very creative.
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Hi Mike, welcome to my blog, and thank you for your comments.
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I love the angles. And I love the blue. I’m not very good at giving feedback, but I know what I like. 🙂
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Thank you – its nice to have you visiting. Short pithy feedback would be perfect! Or hit the like button 🙂
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I love how you have this magical ability to photograph relatively normal items and produce such fine art from them! This is a truly awesome set of images, my friend, well done! Best wishes on the arrival of spring and your sons foray into the world of motorcycles. I was once the young man you describe here, and I am sure if asked, my dad would have said it was quite the scary time for him. Look at me now, I turned out OK. A little green, short and warty, perhaps, but what do you expect from a Toad, really?
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Hey Toad – I would have thought your youth might have featured a speed boat, considering the toad and all. Thanks for your kind words. Photographing the mundane is quite a lot of fun really, and on cold miserable days its a pretty good option, there seems to be a lot of the mundane right here in my house or on the patio.
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Very nice series!!! The blue fabric really has a lot of punch!
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Thank you dh – I like that blue too; if only that were the real colour and not the result of a mistake with this complex gadget called a camera (I explained to another commenter how it came about if you missed that).
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The blue just grabs for attention and doesn’t let go, the drops leave you in awe.. This is breath taking!! Well done!!
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Juanita! You leave me in awe with your wonderful comment. Thank you. I like the things you have listed, but the weave of the cloth is, for me, an important element of these photos too.
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Such beautiful imagery. And I really like your assessment of “leaving in it’s exhaust a cloud of worried parents…” So appropriate.
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Hi xinapray – thanks for commenting – it really is not what we want, but he’s 19. And a very safe driver of cars, stupidity is something he is pretty good at avoiding, especially considering his demographic. These are all reassuring things. Its the other idiots on the road that I worry the most about.
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Wow, these are great great captures. Love the drops, the angles, the details, and the blue is the most attractive thing here. Beautiful! 🙂
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Hi Nandini – thank you for your comments 🙂 The colour came about by accident. I share use of the camera with my son. He had it out the night before and had customised the white balance for some shots he was doing. He made a lot of other adjustments as well. I tracked down all those other adjustments but missed the white balance. The result was that this light greyish-green bike cover became bluish. I decided to make the most of it and darkened it up a bit with more contrast, which the pictures needed anyway, and this is the colour I ended up with. I like the colour too, but anyone looking for a cover like this is going to be out of luck. Unless they get the right filter in their sunglasses….
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I like that “every parent’s bad dream” line. My parents didn’t have to worry about motorcycles because they kept us in old car. In 1965, I was driving a 1953 Packard that had flattened oil cans under the floor mats to patch the holes in the floor. The car shook between 35 and 50 but going faster than that smoothed out the ride.
Here’s a line my dad used with each of his boys. Maybe it will help you with your son: “With a car, you are surrounded with metal. With a motorcycle, YOU surround the metal.”
I like the last picture best. The curve of the mirror tells viewers the blue cloth covers something, and the mix of sharp droplets and blurry ones leads the eye to it. I think it’s a very successful image.
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Hi Doug – or “every parent’s nightmare”… Don’t you wish you had that Packard now (all spruced up of course). My first car was actually the family 64 Valiant station wagon with the Fred Flintstone holes in the floor (rear seats) for locomotion and braking. In those days we all had to go through a government run inspection and the car failed on that basis so I had to get rid of it. The Harvester International was its replacement.
After that I had my motorcyle equivalent in cars – a Triumph TR3B – I, with my short arms, could put my knuckles on the pavement when sitting down. Side curtains only, no roll up windows. Another tractor block (as the HI had in it as well) for the engine, but it went fast and whipped the hair around when the top was down. The hair was long, of course, it was the late 70’s by then. I cut the back off the HI and used it as a cabin on a field project I was on for a few summers and one long cold winter. I cut it off with a chain saw and gave it supplementary walls so I could stand up. It now serves as a garden shed out near the NW tip of Washington State. The local towing company on the Makah Reservation had similar vintage HI’s as their tow trucks so they very happily took away the metal remnants.
As to these photos, I really like that last one as well. I had trouble choosing a favourite to lead with and that one nearly made it first. Overall I am pleased with these as a way of making something out of the bad dream. I know my son won’t want to hear the surrounding the metal line – he knows it. The best thing is for his grandfather, who has ridden now for 55 years or so, to give his quiet advice about how to ride safely. And to make sure he gets some professional instruction. And cross our fingers after that.
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This is a surprising portfolio of a subject containing only the one color but is rich with detail and texture. The challenge becomes one of composition, and you nailed that in each of these. Well done. Next assignment – photograph a black cat in a coal bin. At night.
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ken – this was easy compared to your assignment. If I was lucky that one would result in glowing eyes in a swath of black. Could be pretty cool shot actually. Thanks for your comment – I was really interested in the drops and not much else, but it quickly became obvious that the lighting and background colour were going to be challenging.
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