Shooting a biker dude with his vintage Harley in Joshua Tree

Shot on a Pentax 67 II, 105mm SMC lens at f/2.4 on Portra 160

I’ve been wanting to shoot some new personal work to update my portfolio for some time, and have been looking for things that are a bit more fun and edgy than the typical lifestyle stuff I get commissioned for. So back in November when I was out in Los Angeles for a commercial shoot, I tagged on a few days to shoot my own stuff too.

One of the things I was interested in shooting was a biker dude in the desert. I normally try to come up with ideas that have the potential to look great but also have commercial relevance, but this just sounded cool and I wanted to do it. I’d put together a mood board of shots I’d found from around the web and sent it to Ian, a local fixer I’d been put in touch with by photographer Simon Winnall who has shot out in California several times. Ian put me in touch with Todd, a biker living out near Joshua Tree National Park. We chatted on the phone a couple of times and agreed we’d shoot together one afternoon later in the week.

A few days later I rolled up at Todd’s place with my wife Emma, who was helping me produce and art direct the shoot, and my fixer Ian. We talked Todd through my ideas and he was super enthusiastic, and it turned out he had a lot of experience on shoots too, so I had a good feeling things were going to work out. We picked some wardrobe from his collection of biker gear and settled on a WW2 pilot jacket that was a similar vintage to his self-restored 1949 Harley Davidson Panhead. After 30 minutes getting ready we headed out into the desert.

Todd led us to a dirt road about 20 minutes drive from his place that wound its way into the scrub for a few kilometres with rock formations rising up on either side The landscape was spectacular, like something straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie, and the weather was beautiful with just a few thin clouds and the mid-afternoon sun starting to cast long shadows. I was planing to shoot some action and lifestyle shots on my Canon digitals and then some slower portrait shots on a Pentax 67 II. We discussed a few options and quickly started shooting.

First up we had him burning around a bend in front of the camera, using autofocus and motor drive on the Canons:

Next we did some static shots around the base of a small mesa. I busted out the Pentax 67, loaded a roll of Portra 160, opened the lens up to f/2.4 and metered for the shadows:

As the sun got lower up we did a few more fast-paced lifestyle shots on the Canon 5D and 50mm f/1.2. I shot into the sun to get a backlit look with a bit of lens flare. I kept the ISO down to 100, closed the lens down to f/2.8 to hold a bit of focus, metered to ensure my highlights weren’t blowing out and shot away:

As the light started to drop lower and develop a lovely golden look we decided to grab some action shots. Switching back to the Canons, I hung out the back of the van as Todd chased us down the road. It’s impossible to talk to each other over the noise of the bike so we developed some hand signals for further, closer, left and right etc. I shot on the 24-70 to give me control over my framing. We repeated this a few times and then I climbed up the mesa to get a few shots of Todd in the distant landscape on the 85mm as he thundered by:

Finally, I got Todd off the bike and asked him to clamber around over the mesa. I loaded a roll of Portra 800 into the Pentax 67 and shot off some frames as the sky lit up at sunset:

Finally, as light got too low for the Pentax 67, I got the Canon back out and we shot a few final frames before it got dark. The headlight on the bike gave off a wonderful soft flare that that looks lovely in the photos.

By this point we were hitting ISO 1600 at f/2 and decided to call it a day. I was super pleased with how this shoot worked out. Overall I got a great set of pictures that was exactly what I wanted for my portfolio. And as Todd was a real biker he came with his own props and wardrobe which makes everything cost effective too. Shooting across film and digital really worked out in this case, giving me a different pace and mood between the shots.

Let me know what you think? What dream shoots are you working on?