Dallas Advertising Photographer Featured on Cyril Huze Post
As an Advertising Photographer, having your photography featured on an internationally recognized website is what we all strive for, and when it’s an industry leader like Cyril Huze, well that’s just the icing on the cake.
Just this week, my Motorcycle Portraits of Rick Fairless’ new Victory creation was featured on the Cyril Huze Post.
In this article, I’m going to release the Portraits of Rick’s amazing new Octane called “Ethel”, I’ll show you some Before and After’s, and I’ll share the challenges I had to overcome to produce these awesome photos.
So, strap on your leather chaps, rev your engines, and let’s jump into this.
Rick Fairless’ Victory Octane
If you know Rick Fairless, or you’ve seen the awesome Celebrity Showcase Portrait I did called “Rick Fairless’ World”, then you know Rick’s style is all about crazy and colors.
However, with this Victory Octane called “Ethel”, Rick explores his darker side, to produce one bad ass bike.
You should read what Rick had to say about Ethel on the Cyril Huze Post called “Evil Ethel. A High Octane Victory Customized by Who?”
After photographing Rick Fairless’ Epic Suzie Chopper, he invited me back over to create the images of his new Octane bike to be featured on Cyril Huze Post.
Unlike my previous Bike Portraits, for this I had to produce six (6) profile shots of the bike from each side and 45 degree angles from front and back.
Not to mention the many other close up photos I had to get to show the details of this beast of a bike.
Some Before and After’s
Ok, now that you’ve seen the images that were submitted to, and featured on the Cyril Huze Post, let me show you where a few of them came from.
You didn’t honestly think my Motorcycle Photography was straight out of camera did you?
As great as the Photos of Rick’s Octane look, the biggest challenge was figuring out what I was going to do with them.
Which leads me into the challenges I had with this project.
The Challenges with the Victory
Now, I’m no motorcycle junkie, and in fact, I’m pretty new to the whole motorcycle scene and photographing these metal models.
Being primarily a Portrait Photographer in Dallas, I approach each motorcycle the same as I do the people I photograph.
Each has a personality, each has character, and each have features to highlight and fix.
Challenge #1: The Number of Photos
My first challenge with photographing Rick’s Victory Octane was simply the quantity of finished photos needed to be featured.
As a Composite Photographer, and a Photographer who’s work 98% of the time uses more than 2 or 3 images, there were way too many images wanted, and way too small a budget for that.
Still wanting to produce images that kicked ass, I had to figure out a new way for me to produce images that truly highlighted the bike.
Challenge #2: Location
I’ve always said, “What’s in the background of a Portrait is just as important as the subject in the Portrait”, so I always pay great attention to the location of my photography.
For these Photos, however, I had the challenging limitation of keeping the background very simple and clean.
So, at one of the busiest Motorcycle Shops in the country, with every wall covered in color and tie dye, Rick and I found this one spot that worked great.
Challenge #3: Lighting
Again, I’m used to doing things a certain way, and using a light to photograph motorcycles is one of this ways.
The reason I like Compositing several images together to create one amazing Motorcycle Portrait, is because I personally am not a huge fan of all the glare from lights I see on most Motorcycle Photography.
Now, I was faced with no Compositing, Outside on a sunny day, and 18 thousand photos to take.
So, I packed up my light, parked the bike in the little shade cast by the side of the building, and started rattling off pictures.
That’s a Wrap
The one thing I love about what I do, are the never ending challenges I’m faced with every day, and the more challenges I overcome, the better I get at what I do.
These Portraits of Rick Fairless’ super evil Ethel turned out way better than I could have imagined when I left that day of shooting.
Fortunately Rick loved them and text me this message, “You did a great job and I will get you to take more pictures of bikes for me. I think you may just be the official photographer for Rick Fairless Strokers Dallas! You are very good at what you do young man!”
That’s funny because I’m no young man. Ha!
