I photographed this 1960 Honda 305 Dream for Gerald Tims at Performance Cycle in Oklahoma City. He has a large collection of well restored older bikes and this was one of the first I photographed for him. My goal was to make it look like the girl, Mickey Oyler, was out riding one morning and just stopped for a break. We shot this at daybreak at Arcadia Lake in Edmond. I have photographed the lake many times, mostly for landscapes, so I knew we could get a good sunrise most mornings. We got everything ready before daylight. I had an assistant on this shoot to help with moving the lights and generator. I used a large softbox on my Photogenic heads to light the bike, and then used a grid spot with a 1/2 CTO warming gel to give Mikey the warm morning look.
After the sun was up we turned our setup around and photographed with Mikey more or less looking into the sun. We used a large softbox to camera left to add some pop to the picture and fill in some of the shadows.
Gerald has a large framed version of this picture in his office. He has also used in in various advertising campaigns and in a calendar.
