Vegas

A couple of weeks ago I reported that Vegas is great especially when you factor in the motorcycle auction at South Point Casino. But it’s hard to take photos of the cool motorcycles when it’s snowing outside like it does back home in Minnesota.

Luckily, by Monday afternoon the snow stopped, which left Randy Baxter and I an opportunity to shoot at least one bike before the sun slipped below the horizon, so off we went to Red Rock Canyon.

As mentioned before, we plan to produce two calendars for 2012, the standard Classic Triumph calendar, and another filled with Triumph’s nemesis from back in the day: Nortons. The first bike we actually photographed is a ’75 Norton Commando. Unlike Triumphs of the day, this white beauty came with electric start. Perched on a side road just a few miles off Highway 159, the old Norton looks like it belongs out here in the west, land of open roads and rugged landscape.

This 75 Commando was certainly a road burner in its day – right up until the Japanese invasion.

Bike Number Two

Because the auction starts on Thursday (Wednesday night really) there are only about three days to photograph bikes. In order to make the most of these days, we loaded 5 bikes in Randy’s trailer, headed to the desert and managed to shoot all five on Tuesday. Wednesday we only managed to shoot three, which meant we had nine in the can when Thursday dawned bright and clear with only a little frost on the windows of the truck.

One of my personal favorites from back in the day is the ’68 TR6. There’s just something about the perfect proportions and that wonderful blue paint. We started our morning of shooting by placing the TR6 on a picnic table kindly provided by the BLM, just as the sun came over the mountains near Red Rock Canyon. Some days everything goes just right, and this was one of those days.

Lit by the early morning sun, with the mountains as a backdrop, it’s hard to find fault with this ’68 TR6.

Bike Number Three
By Thursday afternoon, the last day of shooting, we found ourselves in one of the upper parking lots overlooking Hoover Dam. With no cops around we were able to take our time and get some nice shots of the bike with a full view of the dam just behind.

The Dam Rickman was bike number twelve, which made for a very productive week. The current inventory of photos completed for the 2012 calendar is nine Nortons and ten Triumphs. Of course a few of these might end up on the cutting room floor, or saved for another year. Which means another arduous trip to Daytona this spring to shoot more bikes. Yes, it is a tough life.

Rickman built frames and body kits for the already very fast Triumphs, and this has to be one of the nicest examples of their art.