HOLLY HONDA: CB175 CAFÉ RACER BY CHRIS HARTER

[cheb]

I know, I remember it. I doubt the owner liked it, but the painter might have done.

One of my part time jobs is life modelling, some of the pictures will never get it, however long the artist spends at it. Others can get that inexplicable something that makes a picture work in only a few lines.

[The Spin Doctor]

I know, I remember it. I doubt the owner liked it, but the painter might have done.

One of my part time jobs is life modelling, some of the pictures will never get it, however long the artist spends at it. Others can get that inexplicable something that makes a picture work in only a few lines.

So you know what I mean when I said " It's all about lines and proportions. When you get it right, it's obvious. When you get it wrong it's equally obvious."

[cheb]

Yes, but in the opinion of the observer. It's an opinion not a fact. The pictures I like and think have got it aren't necessarily what others think are right and have it. Ditto bikes, buildings, and many other human artefacts.

[The Spin Doctor]

Yes, but in the opinion of the observer. It's an opinion not a fact. The pictures I like and think have got it aren't necessarily what others think are right and have it. Ditto bikes, buildings, and many other human artefacts.

A quick search under 'rules of composition' will find hundreds of hits on Google... whether they are opinion or fact may be a bit blurred, what IS a fact is that you can measure how people respond to visual cues. Do another search and you'll find lots of research on how we look at a visual scene (and a bike is effectively a visual scene, offering specific focal points of extra interest on a background of not-so-interesting stuff) by tracking eye movements from detail to detail, and how the point of focus moves between these focuses of attention and moves between them.

You'll find that overall humans tend to respond in very similar ways - which is fundamentally built-in. It's the we instinctively respond to the environment around us. But it's also known to be nuanced by our own inclinations and interests.

So yes... on the one hand I do agree "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", but on the other sometimes the bike paints a picture that just doesn't hold any kind of visual balance to appeal to the majority.

(And yes, I did one heck of a lot of reading around the topic for Science Of Being Seen https://scienceofbeingseen.wordpress.com)

[weeksy]

Lol it's just a bike

[The Spin Doctor]

Lol it's just a bike

If it were, would someone have lavished all that time and effort on it to make it look different?

As far as I'm concerned, people can do what they want with their bikes... but if they put it up for show, then is it wrong to be critical?

I've never cared about what other people think of mine, at least till I started running post-test courses and realised that people judged my training ability on the cleanliness of my bike (really!). So whilst my instructor bike gets a regular spruce-up and I like the classic Honda to look original (hence the cash I've just punted out on a pair of replica silencers to replace the ones that are about to drop off thanks to 40 years of internal rusting, my old despatch bikes were there to do a different job - and that was to cover miles as comfortably as possible and carry packages efficiently.

a mate of mine looked at my despatch 250 one day (barn door fairing with clipboard holder, pen holder, and visor cleaning cloth holder, the handlebar muffs and hot grips, the homemade slimline panniers cut down from plastic 5 gal jerry cans, the vertical tube for carrying rolled artwork, the top box made out of a pirates chest from homebase to name the mods I can remember), and said: "that's not a bike, that's a home".

And in a way he was absolutely right. It was built for me to use, not someone to look at, and looked what it was - a dung heap.