Shovel with sidecar

This is Wim from Hengelo and he overhauled his Shovelhead and made a nice looking sidecar onto it. We shot some nice photo's today!
















Behind the scene...












The red colour looks great with the flashers pointed onto it!

Kaaskoppenmotor

How Dutch do you want it? JP spend many many many hours on painting his mate's bike Delft's Blue, with little cozy houses, animals and all the stuff you don't expect on a biker's bike! We did some shots of it, today on this rainy dark & grey day. There are some nice pictures though!

Dark clouds, like the Dutch classic oil-painters like 'em. The ambient is, as you see, heavily under-exposed. It's actually daylight!

JP and his lovely wooden shoes!

My 2-pod lightstand of today :-)

L&L Sportsters

Finally some good weather today and so I went to L&L Choppers and shot two of their resent creations. It's two Harley-Davidson Sportster choppers of Michel and Mark. Both guys were really patience and so they let me play around with my strobes! Thanks!! We did a lot of 'standard' statics. But we had some time left so did also some wide-angle strobist arty farty magic :-)

Okay, the flash set-up of both pictures: Bright sun up front, the sky is under-exposed for about two stops. Did this with a really short shutter-time, actually shorter than the flash-duration, but you don't notice it on the pictures. I put a strobe left-high behind the guys, another strobe right-side, behind the front-wheel and a thirth strobe at my right hand next to me. This one was supplied with a grid, just to only light up the front end of the bike and not the face. Never did something like this before but I think it worked out quit good!!

two cool Harleys in new Bigtwin magazine

Every third thursday of the month I’m exited, as Bigtwin magazine, this day, always updates their website and shows what bikes are featured in the next month’s issue! Y’know, I’m pushing the F5 button all the time.... Being inpatience and all that... Well, in the april issue of Bigtwin there are two of my photoshoots published. It’s Sjoerd’s Panhead, with pictures I’m still very proud of. And also Henk’s CCR95 Evo bobber is in next month’s issue. And some translation work too. And then there’s cool GSXR hardtail chopper in old skool British streetfighter style. I think it’s shot by colleague Grizzly? Wow, can’t wait till this issue drops in my mailbox!

Controlling the light

Rene's Triumph now is featured in 100% Biker magazine. Well, this might be a good opportunity to explain why I sometimes use all those big lights and heavy-weight batteries and tripod-stands on location!

The picture on top is the standard photo, without use of any light. Oops! As you see, there's too much dynamic range! The lights in the windows are blowing out out and the bike is covered in shade. It's crap, can't use this for a bike feature...














This looks like a problem, isn't it? Okay, I didn't move the bike or the camera, which was put on a tripod. Rene wasn't in a hurry and coincidently I stuffed my car full of gear. I had to under-expose the windows to get the nice atmospheric colours back. But this way, the bike would be totally black! So, I pointed two 750 watt studiolights (with softbox & umbrella's), ran on 220 v batteries, on each side of the bike. The bike has nice shades and highlights now. So, this way I have total control about the subject (the bike) and the background (the windows). Y'see, it takes some time (and some muscle-power to carry all the gear too) but the photo looks exactly the way I want it!














Nice, isn't it? By the way, Rene modified the bike. Shot this photo at the Bigtwin Bikeshow 2009.

South East Rocks!

I went to South-East Motorcycles today, as they just finished Huib´s Rocker. Huib doesn´t like the Harley Davidson Rocker because of their dead-ugly seat and the gap between the seat and the rear-fender. But South East knows what to do with the Rocker and turned allready two of ´em into a nice custombike with lots of nice details. Huib´s one looks the best of the two and this one will be featured in Bigtwin magazine.

Tried my new Nikon D700 camera (Whoehoe!!!) today. Because the weather was very poor, with lots of rain and wind, I played around with three speedlights to make the paintjob a little vivid. A lot of chrome, blinging all the way (crap!) but got some decent shots. Used the light-boom-stand too, for the first time, and I really love it because I can put a light above the bike, without having a tripod-stand in the way. Yes, I can´t wait to shoot more bikes this season!! The little light on the left-hand side isn´t the real sun but an artificial one!

Wilson II

When I came home from work today, there was a little package in my mailbox. It was from Frederic Bagur, the chef of Wild magazine. To my surprise there was a wonderful feature of the Wilson II in the new issue of Wild magazine. In another issue of this french 'zine, the Bikeshow in Rosmalen was covered and they used some of the studio photo's. Bugger, can't read one single word French... oh well, Pizza is a French word, isn't it? Or is it Italian?

Thnx for the mags Fred.

Paint Preparation class @ KustomBart's

KustomBart did a paint-preparation class in januari. I attempt to put some putty on a little MZ fuel tank.... Paint preparation = Rocket Science!!

Triumph @ Bigtwin bikeshow 2009

Really like this Triumph racer, photographed at the Bigtwin bikeshow 2009. Might be a good one for a full covering photoshoot?

Larry Houghton's CBX

We shot some photo's of Larry Houghton's Honda CBX at the Bigtwin Bikeshow 2009 and Larry said the bike was just finished and no-one clicked the shutter on it before... Cool or what? I really love this bike.

Own Skool Suzuki

To adjust the studio-lights @ Bigtwin Bikeshow 2009 in Rosmalen, I've put my Suzuki in the photo-studio as test object...

Rogues MC choppershow

Be there!