Different Seasons (Where I want to be vs Where I am)

This is what our house looks like in the Summer. This is the weather I enjoy and want to happen all year round so that I can ride more. This is Central Alabama by the way.....


This is Central Alabama today (Feb 12, 2010) This SUCKS! It's not supposed to snow in Alabama. It was an "interesting" ride home from work on the bike in this weather.

Actually I posted these pics to show how much difference the weather can make in a picture. The first picture has a bright and "pretty" mood going for it, the second is dreary and makes you want to put on a sweatshirt. Just some things to think about when planning pictures. We all know that the best shots are usually chances of opportunity, but we do plan some of these things.

Good Bye to an old Friend!

Well, I sold the Honda a few days ago. She was a great bike and I hated to see her go, but I never really ride her anymore and a bike that's not being ridden is a sad machine ;-) The guy who bought her is a young guy and his Dad knows damn near my whole family and he knows my niece and her boyfriend real well so I can keep tabs on her. Trent is in for a good time and I know the old ACE will serve him as well as she did me. These are just a few pics that I had sitting in the folder. None of them are great but they do show the evolution of the bike from a plain jane Honda Shadow ACE 750 to the Batcycle. Enjoy your new life my old friend and I hope you rack up many more miles before it's all over.


Here she is almost stock, just a bat on the air cleaner and her name on the fender.


She's truly becoming the Batcycle here. The Bats are on the tank, the pinstripe is in place and the pipes are coming together.


This is the picture of her that was used in a calendar for our online forum about these bikes.



Here is a shot that was converted to look like a drawing, the Spirit rear fender and front wheel are installed here. This is basically how she ended up before the big crash. After that she went back together, but I removed the bats and pinstripes.



Here are my girls on their last day together. The ACE is wearing a set of original mufflers so she was pretty quiet for the new owner, but I sent the bad-ass pipes along with her so she'll sing again ;-P


And one more time, my all time favorite picture of her. Sorry this post is so long, but this bike and I spent 7 years and 67,000 miles together. We survived getting broadsided by a truck and we're both still on the road, so I think a nice long farewell is appropriate.

Weird Gradient Map that I thought was interesting.

This picture was supposed to be a cool shot with neon signs behind the bike. I planned to make the neon really jump out, but the lighting really sucked on this one. Once again the beauty of Photoshop showed up and let me screw around with a crappy photo until it was at least interesting if not good ;-)

The Old West Near Bessemer, Alabama

I guess this used to be some kind of store sometime ago, but is just an abandoned building now. I like it because it looks like one of those old buildings from the old western movies. If you look close you might be able to tell where I edited out the for sale sign, but I tried to make it not too noticeable. A tree has fallen on the porch since I took this shot so it doesn't look as cool now, but it could be repaired. It's out in the middle of nowhere on one of the windy back roads I like to ride so I can understand why it didn't stay in business, but maybe someone can revive it.

Where it all began!

This pic is from the corner looking at the building where Sun Studios is located. This door goes into the waiting area for tours, it used to be a cool diner and still has the booths and counter top, really cool place and leads to the gift shop upstairs. The actual studio is down the sidewalk and is really just a couple of rooms in this old building, but for just being a room, the place has a REALLY cool vibe. You can feel a strange energy in there. The studio is so cool that bands STILL record stuff there although all the old equipment has been replaced with digital stuff now. U2 even recorded "Rattle and Hum" here as well as some other great modern artists. Why wouldn't you want to record in the same studio where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and many other greats got started. This is holy ground my friends! http://www.sunstudio.com/

Now you see her, Now you don't

Here is the other side of Blaine's '69 Sporty I promised earlier. However I didn't want his ex-wife in the pic so I took her out (if only real life was that easy). In this pic you can see how he used the old 50's style microphone as a tail light, he also custom made the sissy bar. Blaine was one creative SOB (R.I.P.). For this pic I used a combination or area selection, layers, eraser and clone tool to take her and her friend out of the picture. Some pics you can do this too, some are just not compatible with this kind of stuff and you can always tell when those pictures have been modified. I'm sure if you look hard enough you'll see artifacts of what I did, but I think I did a pretty good job on this one. I posted the original so you can see what I did. Post a comment and let me know what you think and don't forget you can click on the pic for the larger view.

My '70 Triumph

Just a picture I dig. I like how the extreme background washed out, but the bike stayed sharp and colorful. Too bad my bike doesn't look like this anymore. I loved the look of this springer, but it was too short and had to go. Hopefully I can get another one of the correct length one day. For now, I'll just use that old Sportster front end I have laying around.

With the new tripod

This is a pic using the new tripod my Brother gave me. The lighting was bad so I couldn't get far enough away to do what I wanted, but I can see a little difference using the tripod and zoom. The lighting was really bad so I lightened up the picture until the bike looked pretty good, but by then the background was getting pretty ugly. At that point I decided to use the old trick of turning it black & white and make it look sepia toned. I think it worked pretty well. By the way, this is my current main ride, it's a 1995 HD Springer Softail "Bad Boy". They only made them for 3 years and less than 4,000 were made in this color in '95. I'll add more to the collection of bikes, but I'm not going to let this one get away, I wanted it for 14 years before money and opportunity came together for me to get one.

Another close up

Another picture of of me playing with close up and weird angles. This is the from cylinder and carburetor of my '77 Sporty. No effects, just close in.

The BatCycle

Here's a couple if pictures of the gas tank of my Honda Shadow. It was solid black when I got it and decided to add some fun to it. I decided to add the bats from the doors of the 1966 TV show Batmobile. The small bat was a carb cover a friend made for me. Both of these pictures are basically me just playing with close up weird angle shots. Nothing fancy, but I kinda like both of them.