Now that we have fully moved into our new space complete with a custom cyc wall and giant Chimera Lightbank, we were itching to shoot something cool...but what? That was an easy thing to answer with the spring weather being perfect for riding motorcycles. Our Creative Director, Dave Keller, was riding his Triumph Scrambler almost daily and our CEO, Anthony Lagoon, had a sweet custom build from our friends and former client, Salt City Builds that he hadn’t gotten photos of yet. The result? We picked the rainiest day we’ve had in a while and let both of them ride their bikes through the storm so we could shoot them.
The first thing we had to do was get these bikes looking shiny and new, so we hit them top to bottom with cleaners, leather wipes, and tire shine. Once we got the first bike centered under the lightbank we thought it looked pretty solid, but knew we could make it better. To brighten the background up, we flanked it with a couple of Skypanels which also gave us the option to play with various colored backgrounds. At this point, we knew some details were getting lost on the tires and on the bottom half of the bike. To fix this, we used one Cineo Maverick pointed toward each tire, and specifically aimed them down the natural lines of the bikes in order to accentuate those details. With these lights dialed in, we were able to shoot and play with the color of the background lighting.
This ended up being a wicked rad shoot for us to break in our new cyc wall and light bank. With that, I definitely picked up a few quick tips I’ll happily share for anyone looking to do something similar:
- Spray the tire shine in advance because it takes way longer to dry than the bottle directions suggest.
- Keep an eye out for an unwanted glare/reflections on all of the minor details of the bikes, and use flags or cinefoil to get rid of them.
- To center the CB750 we used a 2-ton car jack stand placed under a solid spot of the frame and removed it in post. Unfortunately, there was not a decent or safe spot to place this stand on the Triumph, so we had to use its center-stand.
GEAR: - Canon 5D Mark IV - Canon EF 24-70mm lens - Chimera Lightbank - Cineo Maverick - 2x - Arri Skypanel S-120C - 2x