Shooting the Hammer

671 Press needed two covers for upcoming books, and Robert Pandya, the Victory rep (who resides in Austin, Texas) had the perfect bike for the job in town, a Victory Hammer Eight-Ball. So Robert and his brother Manny and I went out into the hill country to shoot the covers on another hotter-than-blazes August night.

The riding shot was for the cover of Ride America, a collection of tours all across America from the pages of Motorcycle Cruiser, Motorcyclist, and Motorcycle Escape. We wanted a shot that evoked going for a ride, and we felt the over-the-shoulder winding road shot was perfect for that. I had two nice examples in my stock, but one was an extra from a GPS unit shoot and the rider wasn't wearing a helmet, and the other was shot in Hokkaido, Japan so the rider was on the wrong side of the road.

We needed a clean example of the same photo shot on a bike with a classic, attractive dash on a curvy road. Our new shot was taken over the shoulder of Robert, on a stretch of the well-known-in-Austin Fitzhugh Road. I scouted the location beforehand, and found a stretch of road that curved up to the right to draw your eye into opening the book, and curved up and away from the bike at the proper angle.

Robert proved to be an excellent photo pilot. He's an experienced rider and a solid photographer. Shooting from the back can be nerve-wracking, as you have one or both hands on the camera. Robert proved eminently trustworthy, and his experience as a photographer meant he understood where to put the bike for the shot.



The cover for The Perfect Motorcycle by Kevin Dammen needed to evoke finding the motorcycle of your dreams. The book answers that question whether you want a Harley or a sportbike, as it is all about evaluating your needs, means and the market, so the book cover needs an image that suggests an ideal machine that is not emphatically in a category such as a chopper or a sportbike. For that image, we wanted a sunset silhouette of a standard-looking but still cool and exciting bike. The Hammer was perfect--all we needed was a sunset.

The sunset shot turned out to be more challenging than expected, mainly because the sunset shot required a ridge. Such a thing is easy to find in the midwest. Well, the hills can be a little hard to find but an open field or other piece of ground where you can shoot is not a problem.

Central Texas has plenty of hills and ridges, so finding a spot geographically suited to the shot is easy. But the area is mainly private land and almost entirely fenced and locked, so finding an accessible spot is not an easy proposition. We found a little turn-around at the end of a dead-end road that worked for us to shoot this cover. We had to tear down some grass and I set up in a ditch in order to get the angle. Note that Texas ditches are not friendly places. Vegetation here is sharp and spiny!

A bonus was that the chrome reflected light from the sky and gave the bike some definition. My intention was a pure silhouette, with the bike totally blacked out. The shots with the chrome glowing lightly are much more interesting. We have both and won't decide on a final image until the cover is complete and approved.