Tonight I ignored the bunch of scanning and developing I've got to do in order to change out the chain and sprockets of the nasty go-fast green motorcycle. But I couldn't get the front sprocket off. And I had to go buy a deep socket to try even. And the plug on my hand grinder (to bust the existing chain) was broken so I bummed a plug next door and fixed the grinder. But I got the brand new D.I.D. X-Ring chain and the back sprocket installed. And some crash bungs, being as it seems likely I'll need them eventually. The smaller-than-stock front sprocket I'll have the shop install another time. Or I'll hit it with a torch to see if that breaks it free.

Anyway, it's been a nice sweaty evening and I feel like I got something done. At some point I'll have to either do the valve check on the red bike or decide to pay the shop ridiculous amounts to do it for me. That's a pain-in-the-ass, but it's a good bike and I don't want to risk burning a valve.

This is Cynn from the same shoot as below. The girl just has presence.

P.S. The woman whose car I dinged yesterday just called with a bill for $150 to fix her tail light. Gonna send her a money order tomorrow and I'm happy to get off so cheaply.

So riding back from LA about noon the traffic sucked. I was splitting the number one and two lanes as usual. There was a tight slot opening so I dived the VFR800 Interceptor into it and the driver on the left put on her brakes. My left hand factory hard bag clipped her tail light and the bag broke off to go rolling into the very slow traffic.

I pulled over, gave insurance and contact info (and will probably pay cash for the tail light) but the bag was now a problem. I got it up between my arms and rode to the nearest exit in Downey, found a gas station where the kid had a roll of twine behind the counter that he was nice enough to offer, and tied the bag sloppily to the pillion seat. He also gave me directions to a Pep Boys where I bought a lifetime supply of bungee cords and secured the bag a whole lot better - good enough to ride home at normal speeds, and now narrow enough to fit those tight slots.

Not sure if I'll replace the bag or just go with soft luggage for any other touring I may do. Or maybe it's time to trade this very fast motorcycle in (I do have another faster one) on a DRZ400SM super motard, which is slower and possibly more fun.

Tomorrow I pick up the smaller front sprocket, new rear and new chain for the Z1000 so I won't have to slip the clutch so bad off the lights. That will reduce the top speed to something like 148mph, but as it's not real easy to hang on above 90mph or so, that's no big loss.

This is Angela, photographed in my studio a week ago today. She's in Germany now, studying (or so she says).

Cynnamon, next to "Soul in the Machine" next door. Ilford Delta 3200 in 120, exposed at ASA 1600, developed for 9 minutes at 24C in XTol. Lit with a single hot light with barndoors to prevent spill onto the polished stainless in the background. Nice detail throughout and no noticeable grain, even enlarged.

I've finally gotten to the medium format, with Cynn coming first, as I'd shown more color of Angela. Quite a bit of both left to scan, though I won't be done before tomorrow's shoot in West Hollywood.

Got the Honda VFR800 Interceptor off the trickle-charger and ready for the trip up. Should be a lot faster than the pickup I drove up in last week. Erin tells me she loves bikes and wants to see some of the tourist sites, so we'll ride a bit before we shoot. Gotta remember the helmet, jacket and gloves for her...

Back to scanning.

Today I got my backup P67 back from the girl who's been using it for the past two months. Along with the macro lens. I managed to cram the body and lens in with the primary body and other two lenses in the Domke bag, so all my shit's now in one bag again.

Selling that dirt bike was sort of a catalyst - I'm riding the Z1000 more again. I'm no sure what's up with that, but it's nice to enjoy riding again. I think it's time for a new chain and sprocket for the Z and a valve check for the VFR800. I dread that valve check, as it's got part-time valving and needs special tools and I have to do both cylinder heads. It's not hard, just fussy and time-consuming. Be nice to have it ready and make a long ride again this year. It's been far too long since I spent a week in the saddle.

Sold my KLR650 semi-dirt bike to a friend today. He got it for about half of trade-in value as it looks like shit and has 42,000 miles since I bought it in 2002. But it's been well-maintained and only recently developed idle problems.

After we met for breakfast we rolled the bike out to the sidewalk and began troubleshooting. I replaced the vacuum hose that opens the petcock, as that was dry and cracking, then pulled and tested the coil. The primary coil had high resistance, which we tracked down to the spark plug cap, a $4 part.

Then he rode it and I rode it and we topped off and charged the battery a little while changing oil and checking other stuff. Then I rode that bike to his place in Lemon Grove and he drove me home.

That bike has taken me to most every state west of the Mississippi. I paid $5000 for it new, did my first thousand mile day on it and have loaded it up with passengers and cargo and even crossed South Dakota in excess of 90mph the whole way once on it.

But I had three bikes and I wasn't riding the KLR650 any more, so it got elected. My friend used to ride a 350 thumper when I first met him, so this is a step up to a hot bike for him. I hope he gets another 40,000 miles from that old bike and loves every minute of riding it.

This is Sidney. Hadn't seen this picture in awhile and stumbled across it looking for a picture of that bike, so here she is.

Well, that tall skinny fashion model I mentioned a post or two back cancelled. That's not a surprise - the surprise was that she would want to model for me at all. Fashion is all about shiny exteriors of aloof and cosmopolitan women, and my work is more personal and sexual and about the human being inside. Well, I like to think it is, anyway. Anyway, that gives me a free weekend, and those are always appreciated these days.

Here in SoCal the weather is, on average, wonderful. This morning it was close to the better end of the distribution. The motorcycle engine was at its peak, crackling along, hitting Middle C around 108mph. OK, I think I was around B-flat below Middle C, as the Z1000 gets really uncomfortable above 80mph or so - one of the reasons I bought it in the first place. It keeps me from accumulating too many speeding tickets. It's close to time for a new chain and sprocket, as the original have lasted now for over 8000 miles and the chain is losing flexibility. A friend says that a bad chain can lose me up to four horsepower, and I need every one of those 132 ponies to get me to work, you know.

This is Ava photographed in West Hollywood a few years ago.

Chix & bikes. I hate that genre. And clothes! What's up with that? It was her idea really.

Well this is Masha, photographed yesterday in the studio on my old beater Kawasaki KLR 650. Those bugs are a permanent part of the windscreen as the bike has taken me all over the western U.S. and I never wash it. She wondered why I had her put her feet up like that, but it was to show her legs, shoes and cleavage.

Masha was my muse some seven years ago. Then I introduced her to a goth boy who turned out to be straight and I lost her. We tried to shoot again about five years ago and it just didn't work. She wrote me saying she wanted to try again, then came down on Monday and we made some pictures. I used the digcam as I didn't expect anything usable from the kind of shoot we planned to do. (There is some 4x5 B&W film awaiting development, too. B&W 3/4 length portraits. Still with clothes.)

I took another day off yesterday to hang around with her and make more pictures. It was a lot of fun seeing her again. Masha's still a babe.

Motorcycle Daily is one of my daily reads. A few days back Dirck published a lament about the loss of the good old days of motorcycling, when bikes were kick-started, bankers didn't look like outlaws, and rain was just part of the environment. He also said something about it being a man's world back then, and that got him some hate mail from women who rode. When I read the article I generally agreed with his views, but knew he'd at least get some complaints. I remember back when women did not ride their own bikes too. In part that was because a rider had to be able to pick the beast up after a fall and few women could do that. And in part it was because there were things men did that women didn't, and vice versa. Bikes were, with very few exceptions, a manly thing.

Anyway, if any of that is of interest, click the link and go see the responses.

Of course this whole thing got me thinking about the changes in photography in the last twenty years. While I've been riding motorcycles for forty years, I've only been making photographs for twenty, so that's as far back as I can honestly consider.

When I first entered photo school the basic course was about half women. Many of the top photographers were women. Photography has never been a man thing. But back then it was a technical craft involving math and chemistry and metal machinery and lenses and tongs and hours standing up in a dark, damp room. It took the confidence to walk away after a shoot with undeveloped film in the bag, knowing that hours or days later when the film was developed you'd have exactly what you saw through the viewfinder. Some folks used polaroids to confirm strobe lighting (relatively) instantly, but those were confined to studios as continuous lighting didn't need confirmation - photographers knew what the combinations of film, meter, camera, lens and settings were going to produce.

Retouching wasn't an option unless you had a huge budget, so it had to be right on the take unless one was willing to use bleach on a print or to spot medium format or larger negatives. It was much easier just to get it right on the film.

That dire and dismal scenario of twenty years ago would have been heaven to photographers of seventy years ago of course, and a ninety-year-old photographer who has been shooting since the thirties would probably bemoan how easy we had it when I started shooting, what with in-camera meters and the rude beginnings autofocus, and all the various films available (including color!).

Things do get easier. And there are always more people who get involved once the hard parts are gone. And there are always more people, period. So motorcycling, once the domain of the rugged male, is now full of the nicest people who couldn't change or patch their own tires or ride home with a broken rib. Anyone can do it. And photography, once a craft involving materials and chemicals and machinery, is now available to most anybody as well.

Does that devalue motorcycling or photography? Yes, actually. It devalues both of them because the qualifications and level of commitment required for entry are no longer very high. Anyone can do it. If the reason for doing one or the other is exclusivity and that's gone away, then one certainly would feel cheated.

But if the reason for doing these things is about the pleasure of the ride or the beauty of the photograph, then why would someone care if others are jumping in once the barriers have been lowered? Wanna be macho - go ride a bull. Yes, women do that too, but not many. Want a technical challenge, go build a radio. Or keep using film like I do.

Here Nathaniel - Lisa.

Another weekend down. Finished a couple of books, spent some time at a cafe talking to a guy who rode in on a bobber he'd built. I'd like to build a bobber.

For those who aren't motorcycle folks, a "bobber" is a short motorcycle with no rear suspension generally powered by a Harley Davidson or vintage English motor. The word itself comes from the "bobbing" of the rear fender, which for many vintage bikes was a heavy hinged affair. Where legal there is usually no front fender. This particular bobber had a foot clutch and hand shifter, a style I've ridden and consider suicidal.

My ideal bobber would probably have a 45 cubic inch WWII-vintage flathead H-D engine in the stock frame, with most everything else removed. That engine is good for something like 20 HP so it wouldn't be a highway machine, but just for cruising around town. I think I'd keep the stock military tank, too. Trouble is these old bikes which sold for nothing twenty years back are now collectors' items. Oh well, another project I probably will never do. I tend to leave projects half-completed anyway.

Angela and Cynnamon in Newfoundland in March. Angela just returned home yesterday from visiting Cynn in Virginia. I think they had a good visit. Both will be out this way in late July.

It came to me last night in a dream. The next thing. Oh man is it going to be tough. And moving. And I don't think anyone's done it before. But I can't tell you what it is until I have some exposed film and can show it. No more talking about it.

Filled the flash green bike with gas yesterday and the guy that works there commented on how clean it was. I looked and there was chain lube on the back wheel, brake dust on the front, mud splattered under the fender and the mirrors were dusty, so I went home and spent a couple of hours cleaning and waxing the wheels and under the fender. It's still not clean, but it is less vile than before.

This is the lovely Angela, nude, examining herself in a mirror. Last week Google moved this site from the #4 slot down to the third page on searches for "nudes." I finally figured out why. I had written several posts without the word "nudes" or "nude" in them and the spiders therefore decided the blog wasn't very relevant for that particular search. Well, it's climbed back up to the #5 spot now, but I'm going to make sure I use the right words in my posts, even if they are about naked motorcycles. "Naked." Gonna have to use that word more too and see what happens. Mebbe even "naked chicks."

If you read this blog, every once in awhile you have to look at a motorcycle picture. It's a "naked bike" if that's any conso- lation. I went out and made a few snapshots this morning for a U.S. importer of Arrow exhaust systems to show what it looks like on this motorcycle model, the 2004 Kawasaki Z1000. Rode it downtown and found a place pretty much devoid of trash with a relatively non-competing background and opened the Leica digicam's lens up, set it at about 28mm effective length for the front-emphasizing distortion and clicked. Still was too yellow, so I added a bit of blue, reduced the size, punched the contrast a little and sent them off to Motostrano.

The bike is damned loud. Sounds like four Harleys with open pipes all running in unison. With the new exhaust it's about 30 pounds lighter and feels it. The pipes should also give me 5-10 horsepower, but I'll have to put it on a dynamometer to re-map the fuel injection to optimize that and have an actual dyno trace. I'll probably do that in a few weeks. It's not going to be run wide open in the near term, so I don't have to worry about running it too lean and holing a piston or anything. I will keep an eye on the temp gauge though.

The next step is to chop off the pillion seat and re-finish the remaining stub to integrate the license plate and its light and the turn signals/brake light in the back, then remove the passenger foot peg supports and put on rearsets and a tube muffler (the term "muffler" is used very loosely) support to visually lighten the bike even more. Ultimately I want something that looks like there's nothing left to take off. Really naked.

Naked seems to be one of the constants of my life...

I am such a drama queen. I've taken a nap and am better now. And that's out of my system.

Catching an early plane back home tomorrow. Tuesday the beautiful, loud, expensive exhaust system arrived for the flash green bike, so I spent the evening installing it. It's really loud and really beautiful. All the segments are held together with springs stretched from welded-on loops and unlike most Italian machinery I'm acquainted with, everything fits nicely. Did I mention that it's really loud? I'll have to slowly work up to actually letting the noise out as I don't want to annoy people. Can't wait to ride it to work on Monday to show my riding friends. They're gonna be sooo jealous.

And now I can get to work on sculpting and chopping the tail off. That's going to be a community project as I sold my welder and wasn't any good with it anyway. Just some tube welding. But I'll also have to learn about composites as I've got to make a replacement tail piece once the back seat's gone and the sub-frame shortened.

Fetish Queen Cynnamon on the left and the lovely Angela/Vanity on the right. "Vanity" is a screen name Angela uses and I'm a little confused about which she prefers me using for what right now. I'll ask her. The photo was made with Cynn's digital camera at some point during the shoot in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada last week.

Claudia, photographed in my motel room in San Antonio, Texas three years back. An interesting shoot - pretty sure I've talked about how sick she was the whole time and how she insisted we continue. Guts - the girl has guts. I know I'll be photographing her again sometime as we've talked about it in the last few months. She also brought along a co-worker or maybe her boss who had seen her naked, but not quite that naked. It was strange to say the least.

Gotta get my bright red Honda Interceptor serviced (32,000 mile) soon so I can do another long ride this summer. It's been a few years since I rode to Washington state to Louisville, to Buffalo to Boston to Philly to San Antonio (when this was made along the way) and home to San Diego. Rides like that are the best feeling of complete freedom I've ever experienced. No real schedules so anything from three hundred to twelve hundred miles a day works, depending on what I want to do. Motel 6 keeps a light on for me and every truck stop serves chicken-fried steak. I s'pose I'd best get planning this one. Models interested in working with me along the way, feel free to comment here starting with "DON'T POST THIS" and giving an email address and we can see what happens. I won't post the inquiries.

So...time for a glass of wine and my current science fiction novel...

Here's another of Candy with that bright line left in the picture.

I've been riding the motorbike all over today in short sleeves. SoCal has some good things going for it fer shur dude.

Gonna surf on over to a local Mexican place and get a burrito.

Sorry about lack of content, but the weather has affected my brain.

A friend from work called and wanted some help buying a motorcycle jacket. Specifically a Vanson jacket. Here in San Diego proper, the only dealer is GP Motorcycles, the dealer for Italian bikes of all varieties. I had a $20 off coupon and a bunch of leather swatches I'd gotten a few years ago when I bought my third of fourth Vanson (yes, I'm a fan), but as he's a really old guy he only has eyes for black leather. (This is the way to tell the age of bikers, BTW. If they're wearing black, they're over 40. If it's got color, they're under. Guaranteed.)

Anyway, he tried on a few, including the one illustrated here and settled on a solid one (not with the perforated panels as shown) and dickered himself a very good deal, paid the money, and the jacket will be stitched together specifically for him by Boston ladies out of heavyweight American leather. That does make a difference. German leather has always been the best, but the industry is all gone there. There no longer is such a thing as German leather. American is second, followed by South American, other European, East Asian and finally Pakistani.

Anyway, this is Ashley in one of my least inspired photographs, wearing my 60,000-mile+ Vanson motorcycle jacket and absolutely nothing else. It's too big for her, and she'd need a helmet anyway. At least in California - she was visiting from Winnipeg.

Motorcycles. It's all about motorcycles again.

"Robb Report Motorcycling" - the writers know nothing about bikes, but the photos are gorgeous. The writers should go learn to ride or something - technically, my mother would do a better job. Can't understand it.

"Bike" - great Brit magazine by riders. Techies, racers and such with no influence from advertisers. Mostly stock bikes reviewed and ridden, ridden, ridden. "Ogri" cartoon inside the back cover is worth the price of the mag. One writer who bailed on the magazine a couple of years back after riding to Buenos Aires is back, having pulled his act together and gotten a new bike. He's also writing for one of the American motorcycle mags, but seems to use fewer colorful words there.

"PB" - stands for "Performance Bikes." Brit again, written by scofflaws, outlaws, hooligans and techies. The best motorcycling story ever was in last month's edition about the European Cannonball Run and the author on his warmed over ZX14R (called a ZZR1400 in Europe) passing trucks in tunnels at 160mph, running from police in several countries and damaging the motorcycle and himself. Lots of hand built sports bikes ranging from 2-stroke V4s to Cafe Racer singles to ultralight Vee Twins.

So pretty soon the world's loudest exhaust system will be delivered to my door for use on the Z1000. That means I'll have to have Lee's re-map the fuel injection and if I have to pay for that anyway I might as well open up the intake path and put in a K&N filter as well. Should give me a peak of 135+hp at the rear tire, but it might all be stacked near the redline. Then we hacksaw the tail off and see what happens next. With a steel frame the bike's sorta heavy. I might put it on a diet and start removing stuff that doesn't make it either work or legal.

For those who stop in for photos of pretty girls here's Claudia a few years back, photographed in my studio.

It's motorcycle time here in Southern California. Weather's fine for riding, if a little crisp, and the dealers' over- stocked 2006s are discounted and anyone doing bike mods is doing them now. I'm waiting for the world's loudest pipes for my Z1000 to ship from Italy. In the mean time I'm riding the nasty old dirt bike, the Kawasaki KLR650 with 40,000 miles on the clock, to work. I don't mind it getting rained on, or even totalled, as it's had a long and useful life already. Besides, it dances in a way that only dirtbikes can, diving on braking, bumping up curbs and splitting not only between cars lengthwise, but sideways between their bumpers.

When I came back to bikes after my kids grew up I did a lot of research, as things had changed a lot in 17 years. That KLR was and still is the most useful motorcycle ever made. I rode it to Mississippi, Montana, Minnesota, did some dayjob trips to Texas on it and even got stopped for speeding on interstate highways while riding it. It would do an indicated 90mph all day long and topped off around 107mph. The luggage rack was adequate to strap big boxes on or a soft bag for traveling and even the pillion seat was roomy and comfy, though I ended up with my balls hard against the tank if the girl wiggled too much. Tires last forever and chains a long time as it doesn't have the power to consume them like faster bikes do. Right now it needs a new sparkplug and maybe wire as it's slow to start, but I'll get to that eventually.

While I probably should have posted a picture of my beater Kawasaki KLR650, it is really ugly and doesn't reflect light much, so this picture of a girl I don't remember will have to do. It was probably one of my very first bondage pictures as I quit using nylon rope early on because the texture isn't interesting. Whoever she is, she's got a nice butt.

Well, another model canceled today. That makes...too many. Sometimes shooting seems seasonal, though the time you'd expect models to want to shoot is Summer, and that is usually the time they dry up and blow away. Now it's Winter when that's happening. As I've said it takes a special kind of courageous model to work with me because of the topic, but lately so many have known what it's about, booked, then canceled. It's starting to piss me off.

On a slightly different topic I should have the custom-made extremely loud four-into-one Italian exhaust system for the Z1000 delivered in a few weeks and I can start work on chopping that bike. I'll have one body panel to fabricate and various methods are rambling through the head including wood-composite and the more usual carbon-fibre. I haven't done either before, but one seldom sees wood on a bike and it's a perfectly good material for composite lay ups. (Gotta make a run to the bike shop and get a couple of K&N filters for the two sportbikes one of these days as well.)

In any case, the very stubby megaphone exhaust will allow me to shorten the tail of the bike - truncate it to right behind my butt - moving the electronics that are out there to underneath the existing rider's saddle, then cut some tubes, remount the taillight, fair the taillight and some turn signals in, and mount the license plate. That "fairing" part is the only thing I haven't figured out yet. Ideally I'd reuse some of the existing tail, but it doesn't look like that's going to work aesthetically, so I'll fabricate.

Then when it's done take it up to Lee's Racing to re-tune the Power Commander, which should have it topping off around 132 HP, with a weight of something like 20-25 lbs lighter than when I started.

At least that's the theory.

Angela entertaining herself in my hotel room in St. John's, Newfoundland last summer. I'll be photographing her again in March with a couple other models.

EDIT: Actually she was entertaining ME.

Ouchie, again! I'll bet that's uncomfortable. They say it feels like cameltoe, which is when panties or pants ride up too high and you get that bifurcated effect. I don't think nylon rope can possibly feel like silk fabric or denim or even canvas...but there is no way I'll ever know, because I'm not going to try to find out.

Bikes on the brain again today. There's an soft market on a BMW naked bike - the K1200R - which people are selling quickly after buying them because they're too big and too fast. I wonder what they thought they were getting. Anyway, the $14.5K price on new ones is being discounted and there's a pretty good market in used ones as well. I don't need another fast naked, as the current Kawasaki Z1000 has more power than I can actually use, but the K1200R has a lot more torque as well as power, and torque is handy. And hey! It's a Bimmer and folks will mistake me for an upscale sort of gent. The kind what removes his golf spikes before entering the studio, you know.

But...I'd rather put that money into a nice little house in the woods in northern Minnesota in a few years. Where I can be a hermit and only venture out when I really, really need to go to a bookstore.

The model is anonymous. Photographed in my studio several years back on 35mm Tri-X pushed a couple of stops.

So...the party last night. I went to meet photo- graphers face- to-face that I only know from their work on the web. And I connected faces with about six new ones. Our hostess, Renée Jacobs, was celebrating her publication at New Nude Magazine and made her rightfully famous bourbon truffles. I arrived early because I'm socially inept. Mikel Featherstone set up a video feed so it seems we were being watched by at least three people who couldn't otherwise attend.

(Edit: Sita Mae Edwards was there too, and she's got the current feature at New Nude.)

I drank little, as the motorcycle ride down the damp congested pavement of Laurel Canyon Road at closing time while intoxicated was just too obviously stupid, even for me. The next morning I went to my daughter's place and photographed some of her paintings that will be shown and possibly sold in a few weeks so she'd be able to make prints if needed. Her current beau appeared later and mentioned that he's read this blog once in awhile. (Hi Jon!) Then there was the long furious ride home down I-5 from Hollywood to San Diego. That ride terrifies me, but not enough to keep me from occasionally diving between cars at upwards of 90mph, indicated. That's the Honda VFR800 Interceptor. For a sportbike it's big and heavy, but it's got a growling V4 V-Tec engine and a top speed of 155mph (I'm told) and it's taken me to the East Coast and back twice and all over the western states for the last four years. And it's red. Really really RED!

Off-track again, it seems. Bikes on the brain. Gonna have to do something about that.

Emalie in Boulder City in an old funky hotel room. She likes riding pillion. Sigh...