Last week I had a chance to squeeze in a shoot that I think worked out to be far more successful than the week before. The location of this shoot was no more that 20 feet away from the first shoot yet the look is quite a bit more fitting, in my mind.

I utilized the giant double doors we have in the studio and set my camera up just inside the doors with a 90mm tilt-shift lens aiming out the doors. The tilt-shift lets me put my camera almost on the floor and, while keeping it horizontal, capture the whole bike in the frame. Outside in the parking lot I set up one strobe with a 6 foot umbrella soft box on a boom pole. Umbrellas have the ability to create a zone of light that softly fades out farther from the center of the light direction. I like this effect because this way I can keep the subject nicely lit but the light will softly dip out away from the subject. The boom pole allows for the light source to have a great range of location and direction. This meant I could position the giant umbrella above the bike, behind it, or next to it with ease. With this technique I made several frames with the light coming from different directions, highlighting different parts of the bike in every shot. 

Having several different frames all with distinct highlights lets me pick and choose what I like from each image in post-processing. After several hours in Photoshop and Lightroom retouching, blending, removing stands, and color toning here is the final image from this shoot. 

Any critique from whomever makes it this far would be greatly appreciated! You can comment here on the post what you like or what you don't like. 

Thanks for reading!