{"id":6035,"date":"2019-09-28T12:43:37","date_gmt":"2019-09-28T19:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=6035"},"modified":"2019-09-28T12:43:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T19:43:37","slug":"natty-bumppo-the-ny-times-and-shinya-kimura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/09\/28\/natty-bumppo-the-ny-times-and-shinya-kimura\/","title":{"rendered":"Natty Bumppo, the NY Times, and Shinya Kimura"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One of my best friends from high school is a guy named Natty Bumppo.\u00a0 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. \u00a0 Ol’ Natty sent a link to me for a NY Times<\/em> story about what motorcycling in Manhattan has become (the story is in today’s edition).\u00a0 Natty has a knack for knowing what I like, and he sure hit the mark on this one. \u00a0 The cover photo, in particular, hit home. \u00a0 But there are a lot more photos in that article and they’re all good.\u00a0 They are in black and white, and that added to the feel of the article.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the story reminded me of a piece I did for the CSC blog a ways back about Shinya Kimura.\u00a0 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). \u00a0\u00a0 There are a lot of photos in this piece, folks, so it may take a minute or two to load.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 Steve thought it might be fun to grab a few photos of Mr. Kimura\u2019s shop, and I was all for that. Little did I know about what I would see.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2026wowee! It was more of a studio than a shop, and it was amazing.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve ever taken, but that\u2019s not me bragging about my photography or my Photoshop skills. It was what I was shooting that made the photos what they are.<\/p>\n

Enjoy, folks\u2026<\/p>\n

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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. \u201cI\u2019d like to live here,\u201d I said. It was that cool.<\/p>\n

I grabbed one last photo, and I think it was a good one\u2026<\/p>\n

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