So .... what's holding up this bike?

[Cudzoziemiec]

So perhaps a more interesting question would be: how did they do this before photoshop? Was it the same, just a more laborious method involving razors and darkrooms?

[nikki]

Whereabouts can I get a sturdy stand like the one photoshopped out of this photo?
I'm thinking an angled approach like this would take up less space in my flat.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEsfVVclt8r/?taken-by=trevworseyphoto

[andytheflyer]

Shoddy work on valve position though, they should be at 6 o'clock (and the crank should be parallel to the downtube).  Tsk Tsk.

And the tyre manufacturer's name is not centred on the valve position.  Amateurs. 

[essexian]

Surprised no one has mentioned this but it's held up by "art."

http://hhgproject.org/entries/cupthe.html

[Cudzoziemiec]

Whereabouts can I get a sturdy stand like the one photoshopped out of this photo?
I'm thinking an angled approach like this would take up less space in my flat.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEsfVVclt8r/?taken-by=trevworseyphoto

That's a patent Peter Sagan stand. Not available for sale in UK but can be hired by the hour.


There is a more advanced version which allows you to save more space by storing bike and wheel separately:


HTH.

[citoyen]

As someone who has long since lost count of how many magazine bike shoots he has been involved in*, I can tell you that the usual method is as per Nikki's answer (first response in the thread). Ideally, you grab hold of the bike again before it topples over... but it doesn't always work out like that. As long as you can find a reasonably level patch of ground, it will tend to say upright for as much as a couple of seconds before gravity takes over, much like Wile E Coyote hangs in the air for a few moments before realising he has just run off the edge of a cliff.

Photoshopping a stand out of the pic seems like more work than is necessary when you can usually get good results without it. I have been on shoots where a stand is used and photoshopped out afterwards, but it's not common IME. I have also been on shoots where the bike is photographed on a matte and the background is photoshopped in afterwards but the results are never quite the same - you can nearly always tell. Sometimes photographers will make a composite of more than one picture, but usually this is for lighting reasons (eg one shot with lighting focused on the front of the bike, another shot with the lighting focused on the rear end).

We have a checklist of rules for positioning bikes in shoots (valves at 6 o'clock, cranks horizontal etc) but you have to remember to reset the bike after every shot, and then the designer goes and chooses a pic where nothing was lined up properly anyway and twerps on the internet accuse you of being an amateur... grrr!



*usually in the role of the person letting go of the bike and moving out of shot very quickly

[citoyen]

a lot easier and cheaper than lugging a bike out to a suitably photogenic venue

IME shots like this are done as part of a ride shoot, so they'll already be on location.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I have also been on shoots where the bike is photographed on a matte and the background is photoshopped in afterwards but the results are never quite the same - you can nearly always tell.

It always looks to me as if adverts for Cube and Ortlieb are done this way. It's one of the factors which puts me right off those brand, excellent though I know Ortlieb products to be (the others are the way the adverts always feature a couple and they're always grinning in a cheese-eating ultra-Hollywood way).

[citoyen]

the crank should be parallel to the downtube

There are two schools of thought on cranks - either horizontal or slightly at an angle so the far side crank is hidden by the chainstay. I've never heard of aligning the cranks with the down tube though.

Valves can be at either 6 o'clock or 12 o'clock, as long as both are the same. Tyre labels should be aligned with valves.

There are other rules but I'm sure you don't expect me to divulge any more trade secrets.

[ian]

The gaussian blurred background and slightly peculiar shadow and the sharpness of the things like the bottle (admittedly, it might be an artefact for the JPEGglefication) make that one look Photoshopped. The selection and cloning tools are now very good. I remember once spending an entire day trying to mask a woman's windswept hair. Most recently I did it in five minutes by dragging the cursor roughly around her barnet and nudging a few sliders. And it did a better bloody job.

[citoyen]

The gaussian blurred background and slightly peculiar shadow and the sharpness of the things like the bottle (admittedly, it might be an artefact for the JPEGglefication) make that one look Photoshopped.

The bit on the left side of the pic looks most glaring to me, where something in the background seems to have been cloned and blurred, maybe to remove a bit of street furniture. And the road behind the bike, where they have probably removed road markings.

Sometimes you can go to the trouble of doing a location shoot and then the picture gets tinkered with so much in repro that it ends up looking fake and you might as well have shot it in a studio. Skies are the worst - if you're shooting a bike for a cover image, you want a nice flat background so the cover lines don't get lost, so the sky needs to be a nice uniform blue with no clouds or planes in shot...

That's what I suspect has happened with this shot - excessive tinkering.

[Samuel D]

Opinion: balancing the bicycle for a second to take the photo is only slightly less cheesy than Photoshopping out a support. Neither are justified.

Lay the bicycle against something or bring a stand and leave it in the photo. If you’re worried about distractions, how about leaving the lens blur as it came out of the camera, laying off the clarity slider, not vignetting the life out of the pic, and not yanking the curves until the colour looks like cross-processed E-6? Because I assure you these things are infinitely more distracting than a stand in the frame. And while you’re at it, please tag the JPEG with your colour profile so my viewer has any hope of telling my monitor what you intended with your adjustments.

A classy alternative to the fake hovering is to have people outside the frame hold the bicycle with disembodied hands, as Rivendell does. (Though their photos are too tightly cropped. Let the bicycle breathe!)

[Pedaldog.]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRjgMK6lBjt/

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

So perhaps a more interesting question would be: how did they do this before photoshop? Was it the same, just a more laborious method involving razors and darkrooms?

Could it not be achieved with mirrors?  And smoke if necessary.

In any case, the advert is potentially misleading as it suggests that the bicycle is inherently stable.  Although to be fair they might have invented an inherently stable bicycle (gyroscopic) which doesn't go round corners.

[ian]

So perhaps a more interesting question would be: how did they do this before photoshop? Was it the same, just a more laborious method involving razors and darkrooms?

For the record yes, masks were just that. So yes, razors, steady hands, and a lot of patience. Fortunately before my time, I'm only old enough to remember Photoshop 2.0 and the tail-end of camera-ready copy.

[Aunt Maud]

Lightweight aluminium gantry similar to a paper roll stand and fishing line, works a treat.

[Cudzoziemiec]

So perhaps a more interesting question would be: how did they do this before photoshop? Was it the same, just a more laborious method involving razors and darkrooms?

For the record yes, masks were just that. So yes, razors, steady hands, and a lot of patience. Fortunately before my time, I'm only old enough to remember Photoshop 2.0 and the tail-end of camera-ready copy.

And I thought you used tidily-led anti-photons to eliminate unwanted parts of the picture.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Opinion: balancing the bicycle for a second to take the photo is only slightly less cheesy than Photoshopping out a support. Neither are justified.

Lay the bicycle against something or bring a stand and leave it in the photo. If you’re worried about distractions, how about leaving the lens blur as it came out of the camera, laying off the clarity slider, not vignetting the life out of the pic, and not yanking the curves until the colour looks like cross-processed E-6? Because I assure you these things are infinitely more distracting than a stand in the frame. And while you’re at it, please tag the JPEG with your colour profile so my viewer has any hope of telling my monitor what you intended with your adjustments.

A classy alternative to the fake hovering is to have people outside the frame hold the bicycle with disembodied hands, as Rivendell does. (Though their photos are too tightly cropped. Let the bicycle breathe!)

Looks ok but a bit Munster-ish. But that's for a catalogue, where you really want people to just see the bike. For a magazine photo, I think you want a good photo, with background and stuff. Otherwise it just looks like, well, a catalogue, which is a bit boring. Though I dare say Citoyen will have a different view.

[Samuel D]

Speaking of backgrounds, why do we want the bicycle to straddle the road (usually a country lane, too) as in the first photo in this thread? There’s no sense or imagination in that, and yet – like the skyhooks and crossed colour channels – it’s become exceedingly popular in the last few years.

Another thing I dislike are backgrounds blurred to nothing with a large-aperture and/or long lens. Boring. Select an aperture that reveals structure in the background while providing a modelling effect. Good cinematography takes this matter seriously, so copy that. Get rid of unwanted clutter with careful placement of bicycle and camera, not by slamming the lens wide open.

[Cunobelin]

Magnetic kittens? Close enough.

OT.... a friend of hours had a magnetically operated cat flap, opened by a collar on the cat

He swears that he found one of the kittens fastened by the collar to the fridge!

[jsabine]

Isn't all of this discussion a bit overheated for a picture that, if it's lucky, will get a passing glance from readers?

It's a bike. It's got a pretty-enough backdrop. It vaguely complements the words associated with it.

I've certainly got no idea what colour the thing is, let alone what brand it is - and I don't actually care. Photoshop vs clever stand vs running assistants was mildly interesting - but product shots like this one are just background.

[Samuel D]

Well, it’s nice to imagine a better world wherein photographs are more than background.

I thought digital photography might usher in a new era of quality and creativity. Instead it and related, profound changes in publishing have generally had the opposite effect.

Catalogues were mentioned above. Here’s a 1984 Palo Alto Bicycles catalogue (PDF). Have a look at the imagination and technical excellence in the photographs on:

• the cover
• page 6
• page 14
• page 15
• page 17
• page 19 (pre-GoPro!)
• page 49 (that’s Ray Hosler running, by the way)

Now we get bicycles stradling a road with skyhooks. Photographed by a copywriter. Who got the job for knowledge of SEO and self-promotion rather than bicycles and culture.

If I sound grumpy it’s because people keep buying this stuff, proving right the cynical bastards who have engineered this mess. We get what we deserve!

[Cudzoziemiec]

On page 6, is it the cycling suspenders you're looking at? 

[zigzag]

it can be easily done with a supporting stick which is later photoshopped out. i didn't do any photoshop in this photo, yet the stick (under the left pedal in case you are still looking for it) is barely visible as it is covered in green moss and blends in nicely with the grass. taken with a very basic smart phone camera, so no bokeh or other advanced features.

[mark]

Thanks for posting the link to the Palo Alto Bicycles catalogue, I ordered my share of stuff from them in the 1980s. You're right, the photography is excellent. FWIW, the two posters depicting riders on the Gavia Pass involve Jobst Brandt, author of "The Bicycle Wheel". The poster of a rider ascending the pass is a photo of Brandt taken in the '70s; the rider descending the pass was Brandt's riding partner and the photo was taken by Brandt. both posters graced my wall at one time, and I wish I could get another copy of each.