Henny B. Stern Photography

Motorcycle Diaries

During the many years of working in the Motorcycle industry we had the opportunity to meet a lot of colourful and interesting professionals. Not only traveling stories are inspirational. Also people are. Take Henny B. Stern’s story for example.

Henny Berno Stern is a Dutch professional photographer with a keen interest – nay, passion - for motorcycles. He has been working as a freelancer for thirty odd years, mainly for various motorcycle magazines/editions and companies as Yamaha Motor Europe, Macna Splash Design and Harley-Davidson. He has also been teaching photography and editing at DeFotolocatie and Bij Vrijdag for the past ten years.

He likes motorcycles, travels, light and shadow and if he happens to be in the mood…he also likes to dance!

Stern’s mother subscribed to a motocross magazine when he was ten-years-old. As from the first issue Henny grew a keen interest in the motorcycle world. He covered his bedroom walls with all the posters and motocross pictures he could find. At the age of fifteen he started to attend motorcycle races, and began to shoot the bikes with an instant camera; he replaced the posters with his own pictures.

Despite his passion for motorcycle photography the idea of becoming a professional photographer came later. Soon after his college-years Henny started to study psychiatry. It didn’t take long for him to realize that he couldn’t squeeze any happiness out of his studies. In hope to find his path he decided to take a break and travel. He followed some carpentry-workshops and took off for; one year traveling lay ahead.

“And in my first trip to Greece it all started. My love for photography became clear and I decided to go back home to study photography, take it seriously and try to make a living out of it.”

Henny is specialized in motorcycle photography but he enjoys photographing all kinds of sports, still nature and portraits.

He describes his style as “Painting with light! Editing the pictures by using light to create a painting atmosphere”. He, most of the times, uses a Canon EOS-1D X Mark II with his favourite 600 mm lenses.

“A 600mm lens is challenging because of its heaviness and very small frame, but once tamed gives a really special results.”

For editing Henny likes to use Light Room, Photoshop and ON1 Photo10.

“I think ON1 Photo10 will revolutionize the world of editing. It is faster, cheaper and as good as any other program.”

He admires and is inspired by the work of James Nachtwey, Marc Riboud and Horst Peter Horst. He believes that when it comes to inspiration “most of the times it has to come from you, you need to make it yourself!”

With his thirty years of experience he considers action pictures to be the most difficult ones. “Regardless of one’s photography skills, if the rider isn’t good enough, you won’t be able to make a good picture”.

And generally speaking “photography is physical but also emotionally demanding. I put my emotion in my work, I put my heart into it. Therefor I need to get in the right mood, just like I need to get in the right mood for dancing. It doesn’t mean I need to be in a good mood, sometimes a little bit of sadness can work wonders!”

Henny’s goal is definitely not to be the best but to “do really good and always better”. And for those of you who also want to do always better, he leaves a short tip:

“If you see a really nice object (road for example) try to find the spot where you can see the object in the best way. Take time for it, explore all the possibilities. Don’t shoot immediately! Choose sunrise or sunset, because of the special light. And if you adjust the white balance…you will make a beautiful colourful picture!”