I met Ashley at a golf tournament outside of Kamloops. I was not there looking for a subject, but you know the feeling you get when someone walks into the room and you immediately see the shoot. That was Ashley. I had been wanting to do a biker-themed editorial for years. She rode her Harley, a Sportster she calls Winona, two hours from Kamloops to Kelowna for this one. That commitment tells you what you need to know about her.
We started in a parking garage. This was deliberate. The sun was at its highest point of the day, which meant the contrast between the bright open sections and the deep shadowed sections was at its strongest. A parking garage is one of the few places where you can actually control that kind of light. You put the bike in the right spot, you move two feet left or two feet right, and suddenly you have hard shadows carving across the frame the way you want them. Black-and-white territory.
Once you move the bike into a space like a parking garage, the whole register of the shoot shifts. Concrete. Hard shadows from the overhead slits of daylight. Wide pillars that can carve up a frame nicely. We found angles I did not know were there when we walked in. We found reflections off the concrete I did not know were there. Ashley held poses for me while I crouched on the ground chasing the right line.
This is the part of a shoot that no reference board can really prepare you for. You are reacting to whatever the space is actually doing with the light at the moment you arrive. You show up with a Pinterest board of references in your head, because you should always show up with references. But the moment the subject arrives, the references start arguing with the reality, and the reality wins.
The rolling shots came next. I called my friend Trent and asked him to drive so I could hang out of his passenger window with the camera. This is the kind of favour you only ask someone who understands that "just drive straight and hold a speed" is a legitimate job description. Ashley held her line beside us on the Harley. I hung out of the window with the camera strap wrapped twice around my wrist. Lake Okanagan slid past in the background.
As the sun dropped lower, the lake did what it does. The kind of light you cannot fake and cannot plan for, you just have to be out there when it happens. We kept rolling. When you get one of these shots right, the whole effort of the day is worth it. When you get a sequence of them right, you know the shoot is going to land.
By the time we were done with the rolling shots, it was dark. That could have been the end of the day. A local tow truck company was kind enough to donate their garage to us, so we drove there next, set up studio lights, and kept shooting. A completely new register. No natural light anywhere. Full control over every source. The bike, the subject, and a concrete bay behind them. Three distinct shoots inside one shoot.
By the end of it, I was absolutely tired. Ashley got back on Winona and rode home in the dark. Two hours, in leathers, by herself, through the mountains.
