Biking Self Portraits - Project 52 - Week 44

For quite some time I have been trying to force myself to go out and shoot some self portraits of me on my bike. I have been putting it off but with a possible permanent change in weather starting any day now for the next 6 months, I thought I should finally go out and do it. I had recently ridden a trail that looked like it could contain some ideal places to try and shoot. I took all my strobe gear and tripods, anticipating darkness under the canopy. The next challenge was triggering the shutter at the right moment. I didn't have a remote that was mounted anywhere on my bars, so had to go with using the 10 second timer, and using the trial and error method of trying to time my position for the moment of truth!! I experimented with different angles, flash guns, positions of light, light filters and different stunts, capturing a number of decent but not outstanding images. Again I find that I must shoot wide open and at a high iso to capture any ambient light, which leaves the images crawling with digital noise.  I did find that using a soft box over my Metz flash gave me the best light to work with so that was a good bit of learning. Next project will be obtaining a newer camera body (my 50d is a 2009 camera) that can shoot at higher ISO with having such detrimental effect on the images. Biggest mistake I made on the day: leaving live view on accidentally before pushing back up hill for another run past the shutter. I am not sure of the reason, but when you do that, the flash doesn't fire, and I just happened to have timed things perfectly, so it would have been the photo of the day otherwise!!