This weekend’s jaunt was a Yamaha R1 superbike photographed by Andrew Butler in an MOT bay at Speed Superbikes in Exeter.
Quite frankly January in an MOT bay is cold, really cold. Tight too, the bike is meant to fit along the bay and not across it but we had been offered a bike and a space to shoot it.
Converting a Workshop Into A Motorbike Photo Studio
Bikes shoot well from a distance but the space was only a little over a bike’s width. The meant that the options were limited. However the satin finish is a dream to photograph compared with hi-gloss.
The shot was lit by two Bowens Gemini Pros with 6′ strip soft boxes one above one below. A couple of Nikon SB910s were used behind the wheels effectively as hair-lights. Nikon D800e 70-200 ƒ2.8. No fancy Photoshop, just a bit of curves in Lightroom and some background tidying.
Metering was really important, grey on black is not going to suffer fools gladly.
Big thanks to Speed Superbikes for providing the bike and the bay.
Big, big thanks to Karin for her continued support. You can see an iPhone shot of the setup on our Facebook page, and more from this series can be seen here.
