Part three of the From Estonia with Love interview. Motorcycle travellers Margus and Kariina talk about hand-held panorama photography, shooting video documentaries of their adventures, recording audio, food, music, border crossings and more...
Anthony: Now something I really like is your hand-held Panoramas. You don't trim the edges - so they are jagged where the individual panoramas overlap - but the freedom of the compositions is incredible! You grab everything that catches your interest. It looks really unique.
(Click any image to view full size and higher quality - All photos copyright Margus Sootla)
Personally I’ve hesitated making panoramas because I was convinced the results would be terrible without a pano-head on a tripod, finding the convergence point of the lens, all that stuff. I mean that’s really too much work when you’re dealing with life on the road.
I know there’s the parallax error issue that will mess-up objects that are very close to the camera, but you seem to avoid that problem in your compositions.
Have you got any tips for composing handheld panorama shots?
Margus:
Not really, I can't even describe it since all panoramas need different techniques. Just practice a little with handheld panoramas, give each frame some overlap and try to stitch them later and see if it works - many times you need to stitch them manually. You'll learn the small tricks in the process.
So are you shooting your panoramas in manual mode, so the exposures match?
Most of the time the camera is in manual mode, but recently I've started to use a polarizer on the panoramas. This makes things more complicated - I change the exposures over the frames plus I play with the angle of the polarizer to even out each frame. Sky is the most difficult and even with very hard trying you can't get the ideally smooth panorama in terms of exposure, but I've started to kind of like the "dynamic" feel in those panoramas. Maybe it's an acquired taste too.
And we continue with part two of our From Estonia with Love interview, with world travellers Margus and Kariina.
Be sure to read Part one of the interview here
(Click any image to view at higher quality - All photos copyright Margus Sootla)
So Margus, you do the bulk of the photography. You’re shooting with several cameras; you have a pretty serious medium format Pentax shooting film, a compact camera and a couple of video cameras as well.
Let start with the compact cameras - you’ve been through several! You started with a simple Canon PowerShot A710is - Lost it to pickpockets in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Then you upgraded to Canon PowerShot G11 in jakarta.
Now the G11 is an advanced compact camera - you can manually adjust all the settings. I noticed that your "snapshots" got a lot better after you bought the G11 - Did having a more capable camera encourage you to try harder with your digital photos?
The threadbare riding gear is faded, the colour bleached-out by the sun. The passports are full, newer stamps overlay the old. The bike is scarred and worn from multiple crashes and countless tip-overs.
But like Ilford 120 through a Pentax, Margus and Kariina defiantly roll on, taking some of the finest overland travel photography you will see.
(Click any image to view larger, higher quality photos - All photos copyright Margus Sootla)
Anthony
How long have you two actually been on this epic? Have you lost count of the days? Do words like “Tuesday” or “Weekend” have any meaning at this point?
Kariina:
We set out on the 1st of October 2008, so it is something like two and a half years by now - after a while you really stop counting the days and the months! The initial plan was to do the circle in 1000 days but now it seems we'll be going over a little.
Days of the week are pretty irrelevant, as are the numbers on the clock - we wake up when the sun rises and go to sleep soon after it sets, which is quite an organic way to go about our daily life.
India on an Enfield. A dream for many motorcycle travellers. Indian filmmaker Gaurav Jani does it like no other, pushing the 1950's technology far beyond where it was intended to go - recording his own progress on the way. Gaurav travels to such far-flung locations of the Indian Himalayas that even he is viewed as a foreigner. Gaurav's painstaking do-it-yourself style hasinspired many, but nobody does it quite like Gaurav. He's really something different!
"While the world media has shifted towards drama, hype, scandal, lifestyle and oomph, we have consciously moved away from the mainstream to the dirt track, churning out films that inspire, motivate, enrich and at the same time mirror life.
Our main focus is to make films and documentaries on remote regions of the World. This gives us a chance not only to explore new subjects but also to explore ourselves by interacting with the people." Gaurav Jani - Dirt Track Productions
Top o' the world - Photos copyright Gaurav Jani
Anthony: So Gaurav, where in India are you from? How long have you been riding?
Gaurav: In India, I live in Bombay and have been riding long distance for almost 10 years now.
I see a lot of fantastic motorcycle adventures from India, I've seen great rides from people from Bangalore, Pondicherry, Mumbai, Delhi - Chanderjeet is an ADVrider rockstar. but on the 60kph club website it says:
"Social structure in India doesn't encourage Adventure biking or cross country biking, hence the community was formed where in like minded bikers could interact and get enough encouragement to live life the way they wanted to, on the ROAD."
60kph was formed in 2002, so that quote from the website is quite old and things have changed drastically in India in these nine years. When we started the club, that quote was very relevant - but with the booming economy, better roads and better medical facilities on the highways, a lot of people are now starting to travel on motorcycles.
In India, is it still considered quite rebellious to run off on a motorcycle, leaving your family for weeks at a time?
I remember your friend Nicky had to miss her brothers wedding to join One Crazy Ride, and that's a BIG DEAL, especially in India!
A man struggles to keep his footing on the loose desert shale, there are no easy hand-holds on the steep incline. Much of the spiked foliage would draw blood in a fall and he has a load to carry. Dust rises from the rocks that tumble down behind him. But the slope is easy where he has stopped to set a tripod and video camera. Far below his motorcycle leans on it's sidestand along a dirt track and beyond that shines the blue water of the gulf and the frigate birds circle high above in the clear sky. The Baja climate is too warm to be climbing hills in heavy boots and a helmet, and the man sweats from the exertion. After a moment's rest in the light breeze he peers through the viewfinder of the black camera, framing the scene and making small adjustments. Satisfied, he sets-off back down the hill leaving the camera behind.
And so it goes, behind the scenes of Beyond the Border - Riding Solo in Mexico
For more than twenty years, Sterling Noren has been a visual storyteller. He has worked with television documentaries, journalism, film and video editing, commercial production, motorcycle travel and instructional videos. He's produced work for the GlobeRiders with Helge Pedersen, TouraTech, BMWmotorycles, The Discovery Channel and plenty more.
I was excited to catch-up with Sterling and learn more about how he uses the camera as the tool to share his motorcycle adventures.
Anthony: You’ve been all over the place on motorcycles; Iceland, China, Russia, Turkey - How long have you been riding motorcycles and what do you ride now?
Allan Karl is a motorcycle traveler, writer, photographer, musician and public speaker.
In 2005 Allan packed up a few things on his BMW F650 and left behind his home in California. He rode north to Alaska to properly begin his ride the length of the Americas. From Brazil he crossed the Atlantic to traverse Africa before finally pausing in Istanbul.
On this last trip Allan visited thirty-five countries and photographed the people, places, and experiences he found along the way.
I was inspired by Allan's WorldRider trip on ADVrider to take-up motorcycle travel, so I was really happy to catch-up with him to ask a few questions.
Anthony:
So when you first set out on this trip, did you have any travel experience from before?
Allan:
I convinced my parents after graduating college that I wanted to move to California. I was always a fan of road trips and this cross-country cruise in a borrowed car ignited the travel bug that'll be with me until I die.
Just a few years later an older friend of mine was planning a trip to Indonesia. and asked if I'd like to go. That trip - when I was just 24 - lasted two months and involved cruising eight Indonesian Islands. On each island we rented motorcycles, small 125-175cc two-stroke Japanese bikes.
I made every effort to travel, by motorcycle when possible. Before I embarked on my WorldRider trip I had been to about fifteen countries and traveled to forty-five American states.
Travel had become more important to me than any material possession, except maybe my Mac and my camera!
WorldRider is the culmination of my dream to see the world. And I'm not done yet.
And how about the whole photography thing, was that something you were into before the trip, or was it the trip that sparked your interest?
Motorcycle Travel Photography.
Motojournalism book one is about taking better photos of your adventures with the camera you have now. Written from a motorcycle travel perspective, but applicable to all overlanders, Book One teaches the foundational photographic techniques you'll need to come home with great photos of your travels.
Book One 41 pages - Just $10!
Motojournalism book Two is about how to choose camera equipment for your overland travel, how to pack it, and how to operate it. Manual mode, aperture, shutter-speed, ISO, exposure compensation, histogram, and heaps more.
Book Two 49 pages $15.
Read about the trip
Read about the last trip - Montreal to Panama - with plenty of words and photos.
in jakarta. 
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