Portrait of a Bike Designer

(complete gallery of selects)

My friend Roxy designed this really cool Ibis bike and asked if I would do a portrait of her with it as the folks over at Nat Geo want to feature her in some new textbook.  I took the opportunity to play professional photographer for the afternoon to help her out, and came away at the end of the day humbled and reminded that photo guy isn't my day job!

A few "rookie" mistakes I made along the way.

• New Gear:  Trying to create a "studio kit" that gets me close to what is possible to shoot in the studio (w/o having to lug around 50lbs) of gear, I got my hands on two new SB-900 and a set of Elinchrom Skyport radio triggers (smaller and cheaper then Pocket Wizards).  Gear was all good, but trying to sort it all out on a new shoot less so.  Note to self,  get this shit sorted about before you go in the filed.
• Weights:  Turns out that umbrellas make pretty dang good sails and sans a some sand bags to hold them down, they take flight on a typical SF windy day.  I think I sacrificed two of them today but fortunately the SB-900 survived several drops.
• Dark at Night:  Who would have thunk!  Next time best to bring along a few flashlights or something.  Focusing wide angle glass sans light no-worke.  Had to have Roxy hold my iphone as a focusing point.  I think I need to figure out a way build some modeling lights into this rig for this kinda shooting.
• Camera Bag:  If you leave it in the scene you are shooting, it actually shows up in the picture, and..well, looks like a camera bag.

A few things of note.

• 1/2 CTO Rosco Gel:  Need to do more of that.  Rally nice in toning down the halogen backgrounds or just casting a bit of a warmer light on your subject.
• Assistant:  Man, I could have used one. 

In spite of it all, I think we ended up with a few decent shots.  Fully gallery can be seen here.