Those of you who know me may be surprised to see this post. Yes I had taken a break from motorbike photography and yes, I have been asked to return to the fold and shoot for the 2026 Superbikes Calendar.
So recently, like buses, three bikes have been in front of my lens within a short period of time. A BMW, a Ducati and a Yamaha.
Much of my motorbike photography is undertaken outside though often with full studio lighting and usually tethered to the Mac.
The BMW was shot first but we had the luxury of having the lovely machine inside (the weather did look threatening.) However the camera needed to be at a suitable distance which meant it was outside on the forecourt! I initially shot a ‘safety shot’ without any lighting and it looked fab, it’s that kind of bike. Doing this means that, if a catastrophe happens I do have a shot to go home with. But the carbon looked like it would really gleam under full lighting, I wasn’t disappointed. I had mains power, meaning that the 1500w, 1000w and 500w strobes were fed with mains light-juice. There are two similar shots in the gallery, the first is a quick Lightroom hack as I was shooting, to check that I was on track, whereas the latter is the tidied up shot removing background distractions. The bike itself had little retouching.
Next, a day later, came Stuart’s Ducati Panigale. The car was still loaded with a full compliment of lights and that’s how I expected to shoot, there is external power at this location. However, on the morning, we got out of the car and the bike was just waiting for us, basking in the morning sun. It looked fantastic so I hurriedly pulled the camera Peli-case out of the car and set to. As with the BMW I took a quick test/safety shot, recording to the camera and then tethered the Mac. The shot only really needed a bit of light on the tires, I actually used last year’s calendar as a lighting flag controlling the spread of light from the Nikon speedights.
Finally in this set is the funky Yamaha, I love the retro look of this well received machine. This was an example of pre-visualisation. Having visited the site previously I knew exactly how I was to shoot the bike. So, although Alex offered to position the machine immediately I chose to set the camera and lights first. Again I had to work quickly because the morning sun was about to invade the set. This was in contrast with the Panigale where the light was about to be obscured by clouds.
Lit with the two big Bowens strobes but this time running from battery packs the whole shoot was mains free. Apart from the large octa (key light), not octopus as my spellchecker insists, all of the other light-sources had CTO (orange) gels on them including the two speedlights. I wanted to bring a warmth to the highlight in this image.