ST-Owners Calendar Photo Guidelines

Here are some guidelines for submitting photos for the ST-Owners calendar.

Subject Matter

There should be one or more ST1100 or ST1300 motorcycles in the picture and no other brands or models.

Avoid putting recognizable people in the picture. Past calendars have had silhouettes, riders in full gear and full-face helments and one rider's wife from the rear off in the distance.

If reasonably possible, try to keep things that aren't permanently attached to the bike (helmets, gloves, jackets) out of the picture unless they help tell a story.

Try to tidy the bike up a bit if you can. For example, don't leave cables hanging visibly over the side; it's better to tuck them out of the way or at least coil them up on the saddle where they won't be so obtrusive.

If your bike is parked on the side stand, turn the front wheel so it's parallel to the bike. This isn't mandatory, but from a number of angles, it makes the bike look better.

Composition

Overall composition should be horizontal. Verticals which can be cropped into horizontal will be subject to the resolution requirements outlined below.

The aspect ratio of published images is 1.27:1. Panoramic or other wide formats don't work unless they can be cropped and will be subject to the resolution requirements outlined below.

Leave about 5% of the width or height near the edges. Don't chop off the bottom of your wheels or place the bike at the very edge of the picture.

Try not to catch the sun on the shiny parts. A couple of small hot spots can be edited out, but large, washed-out areas don't look good when printed.

Avoid using the flash perpendicular to any of the reflectors, your license plate or other reflective material. These tend to wash out and don't look good when printed.

The same goes for lights. Turn them off if they or their reflectors will be in the picture and will be directing light toward the camera.

If the picture is not of a moving ST, shut off the engine so the bike isn't vibrating. This can cause subtle blurring.

If you don't want your license plate published, don't include it in the picture. More people see your license plate on the street during an average day than will probably see the calendar. Images with license plates that have been altered will be rejected.

Camera and Camera Settings

Use a good-quality camera with a clean lens. Most point-and-shoots made after 2003 do just fine. Digital SLRs with good glass are wonderful. Mobile phone cameras are dreadful.

Shoot in the highest resolution your camera offers. The absolute minimum acceptable resolution for an image is 1024x768. Photos at that resolution will have to be incredibly sharp and be outstanding in every other respect.

If your camera has image quality settings (i.e., "Basic" or "Fine"), use the best setting available. Using lower setting introduces compression noise into the picture.

Disable any features that imprints anything other than what the lens saw (i.e., the date) on the image. All digital cameras with clocks embed the same information in the Exif data included in the image file.

Et Cetera

You must hold the copyright on the picture. If someone else took it, a written statement from the copyright holder releasing it for publication is required. Email is fine.

Try to avoid submitting every picture you take that you think looks good. Save them up and once in awhile pick out a couple of those that really stand out. If you take a lot of pictures, post them someplace where they can be looked at )en masse_ (e.g., Flickr or SmugMug) and post a link to them. Download of full-resolution versions should be available because scaled-down versions sometimes hide technical imperfections. (Sometimes they cause them, too.)

If you can submit the original image as it came from the camera, do so. There are a few oddities in producing the calendar that have to be dealt with, and re-cropping the original usually makes for better results than trying to make a pre-cropped version work.

What to Submit

When submitting a photo, please include the following information:

• Your nickname on ST-Owners
• The name of the photographer if it wasn't you
• Your permission to use the photo or permission from the photographer
• A description of where the photo was taken (e.g., West Bent Armpit National Park)
• The city and state or province (e.g., West Bent Armpit, Kansas) or the city, region and country (Storkstrangle, The Wastelands, Elbonia) where the photo was taken. If taken on the road between towns, the name of the nearest one will do.

-- MarkFeit - 13 Aug 2007