Five ways to get a bike photographed, each with a fixed frame count and a price basis

This is the one most people book. You are selling a bike on a marketplace or a classifieds site and the phone photos in your driveway look like every other listing. We take the bike, shoot the nine-angle plan, and send back a set a buyer can inspect from a sofa: both profiles, cockpit, drivetrain, both brakes, wheels with the tyre sidewall, the serial, and the whole bike beside a one-metre rule.

For shops moving used stock, the same set on every trade-in means your used page stops looking like a garage sale. Six bikes dropped at once is a normal morning. What we refuse to do as a used bike listing photographer is clean up the truth: dents, chips and a tired saddle stay in, because a buyer who drives across Austin and finds a hidden scratch walks away and you lose the day.

Ecommerce bicycle photography lives or dies on consistency. A customer scrolling your category page sees twenty thumbnails at once, and if one is shot from knee height and the next from eye height, the range looks cheap before anyone reads a spec. So the tripod is locked at hub height, the lens stays at 70mm, the turntable is marked, and the sweep does not move between bikes.

We shoot on a warm neutral paper by default. Shops that need white background bike photos for a marketplace spec get a cut-out version on pure white in the same delivery, no extra charge, as long as they tell us before the shoot. The standard catalogue frame count is three per SKU: drive side, non-drive side and a three-quarter front. Want the full nine? That becomes the listing-set rate.

Colourways count as separate SKUs. A frameset without wheels counts as one. Bring the bikes built, tyres pumped and reflectors either on or off across the whole range, because we will not mix them.

Bike rental fleet photos are a different job from a studio set. We come to you with a portable backdrop and one strip light, pick the flattest bit of your yard, and work through the bikes model by model. Rental customers want to see the basket, the step-through, the lock mount and the size range, so each model gets both profiles and a cockpit frame, and each size gets one scale frame with the rule.

Fifteen bikes is the ceiling for a half day, not a target. Three models in two sizes each goes quicker. Twenty identical bikes need fewer frames than fifteen mixed ones, so ask before you assume two visits. A clean pavement to put them on is your job; we have turned up to a yard full of puddles and a pressure washer running, and nobody wins that morning.

Sports equipment product photography in Austin, done with the same discipline as the bikes. The key light sits at 45 degrees to the item and never moves across the session, so a helmet shot on Tuesday and a pair of shoes shot three weeks later still belong on the same product page.

Each item gets two frames: a three-quarter hero and a detail of whatever the buyer checks first. Buckle on a helmet. Cleat plate on a shoe. Hub and spoke count on a wheel. Skis come in season, and anything over 2.2 metres long we shoot flat on the floor from a ladder rather than pretend the sweep is bigger than it is. The minimum is six items because setting the light takes as long as shooting the first three.

For an on location bike photoshoot in Austin, we pick the spot with you beforehand, usually a trailhead, a quiet street in the early morning or the pavement outside your shop. Two hours covers one bike thoroughly or three or four bikes at a lighter pace. The same lens rules apply outside: 70mm, level horizon, no wide-angle drama.

No riders are posed unless you bring one, and if you do, they sign a release and you own the arrangement. We do not shoot in rain, and we do not shoot into the sunset. Overcast is our favourite weather, which in Austin means you may need to be flexible on the date. Moving a session for weather costs nothing.