Here is a short behind the scenes video showing how I used a few Speedlights to make a commercial shot for Riders Bristol of their one-off Harley Davidson 48 custom. This bike is now offered for sale should you wish to put some magic in your life.

Speedlights: 4x Cactus RF60 and 1x Nikon SB900 with a Cactus V6 tranceiver

Camera: Fuji X-E2 with 18-55mm zoom

Project coordinator: Len Martin

Transport: Clevedon Motorcycles

More information after the jump…

I used a Honl petrol green gel to light the background

I used Honl ⅛ grids on two of the flashes to create pools of light on the bike. Flash set to B was used to light up the crankcase of the bike as the matt black paint on the Harley just soaks up the light.

The flash brackets are these Gemini brackets. I usually use them with brollies. There are also three of these brackets.

No metering was used. I set the background to be about 2 stops under and added the background light (D) to taste. That worked out at full power. I then switched that off and lit the rear left of the bike and the front tank areas. I found both flashes looked best on the same setting so I assigned them to ‘A’ at ⅛ power. The front wheel needed some life so I added another low flash and assigned that to C.

Once it was lit I made this video and too the shot. I also fired off some close ups for my client for advertising purposes.

Please feel free to comment below.