Natty Bumppo, the NY Times, and Shinya Kimura

One of my best friends from high school is a guy named Natty Bumppo.  That’s not his real name, but it’s what he goes by when he’s out killing mockingbirds and I thought I’d use it here.   Ol’ Natty sent a link to me for a NY Times story about what motorcycling in Manhattan has become (the story is in today’s edition).  Natty has a knack for knowing what I like, and he sure hit the mark on this one.   The cover photo, in particular, hit home.   But there are a lot more photos in that article and they’re all good.  They are in black and white, and that added to the feel of the article.

Anyway, the story reminded me of a piece I did for the CSC blog a ways back about Shinya Kimura.  My photos for that piece were in color, but the nature of Kimura’s customs and the feel of his shop lent a sepia feel to the photos (even though they are in color).    There are a lot of photos in this piece, folks, so it may take a minute or two to load.

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When I rolled into the CSC plant yesterday, Steve Seidner asked me to come along with him to visit a shop a short distance away to meet Shinya Kimura, a man who builds custom bikes.  Steve thought it might be fun to grab a few photos of Mr. Kimura’s shop, and I was all for that. Little did I know about what I would see.

From the outside, all I could see was a small shop (at least it appeared that way initially), but when I entered, I was immediately stopped dead in my tracks by one of the most beautiful custom motorcycles I had ever seen. It was a CB750 Honda (one of the very early ones) with an incredibly beautiful sculpted aluminum fuel tank. The overall effect was visually arresting. I had never seen anything like it. The lens cap came off my Nikon, I dialed the ISO up to 800, and I had started snapping away.

Steve introduced me to Shinya, and he invited to look around the shop and photograph whatever I wanted. And I did just that, not really knowing who this guy was. But the shop…wowee! It was more of a studio than a shop, and it was amazing.

Last night I went through the raw files I had captured with my little D3300 and I processed them in Photoshop. I think they are some of the best photos I’ve ever taken, but that’s not me bragging about my photography or my Photoshop skills. It was what I was shooting that made the photos what they are.

Enjoy, folks…

I was lost in the wonder of Shinya’s small slice of motorcycle Nirvana and I guess that was obvious. Shinya smiled at me and asked me what I thought about his place. “I’d like to live here,” I said. It was that cool.

I grabbed one last photo, and I think it was a good one…

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