Yesterday was a bit of a flier when the opportunity to shoot the BMW S1000RR popped up courtesy of the fantastic team at CW Motorcycles in Dorchester.
It was an impromptu shoot, I phoned up to firm up a prior arrangement, Jon Wells said sure, come down now, bring your licence. Trepidation set in. I ride a BMW, I’ve had several BMWs but this one has double the power of my bike, it’s smaller though.
Simple Natural Light Motorcycle Photography
I was going to make this a solus trip, throw a Nikon in a backpack and ride the S1000RR to the location that I had in mind. As it turned up Karin was up for some sun so we chucked the whole works in the Saab and went prepared for all eventualities. Well, we didn’t prepare for the Saab dumping its water five minutes from CW but hey-ho.
Sat waiting outside CW, the bike was totally gleaming in the sun; clearly prepared for the photo outing and as I said Jon and the team as ever really do push the boat out.
In spite of having all the lighting (strobes and speedlights) in the car we kept this a sunlight only shoot, just a couple of reflectors to the left of the shot to lighten shadows and brighten some highlights, D800e on a tripod and wireless remote so that I could hold one of the reflectors.
As ever with these calendar shots we are looking for a single image although it would be great to spend a bit more time with this machine. Karin did comment that it seemed odd coming to the beach and ending up down the back of a port.
I won’t pretend to have given the bike a thorough test, it was pretty much a straight road down to Weymouth although admittedly the same road was much shorter on the way back. All I can say is that one short trip was enough to intrigue me greatly. The bike is indeed very easy to ride gently and feels fantastic. Karin said it sounded great, following in the car she wound the windows to hear the soundtrack.
Really pleased with this if only because it reminds me that the sun does shine sometimes.