Phil Aynsley
Professionally shooting bikes for 25 years and now a weekly contributor to MCNews.com.au
Hi there. I’m Phil. I’m a photographer. And I’ve been approached to do a weekly column for this august on-line publication. Basically I’ll be choosing images I’ve taken of a bike or motorcycle related topic and accompany those with information on said bike or topic and hopefully some interesting background on each shoot.
For this first column, however, I figure I should start by giving you a bit of background about myself.
I started taking photos at the age of 11. I started riding bikes at 17. I’ve only ever owned Ducatis. The only Ducatis I’ve owned have been bevels.
I’ve been taking photos professionally for 25 years. If you read through a copy of REVS in the ‘90s, or StreetBike, Two Wheels, or Italian Motorcycles it was likely you saw my images.
Since 2001 you might have seen my work in AMCN, Motorcycle Trader, Bike, Classic Bike, Motorcyclist, Classic Motorcyclist or Moto Revue Classic.
A book of my Ducati images was published in 2009 and a second volume will be on the shelves later this month.
To give you a bit of a taste of what to expect in future weeks here is a sampling of images, ranging over 40 years of bike photography.
Racing
I pretty much started learning photography by riding to Amaroo, Oran Park and Bathurst and trying to shoot the races.
Decades later I had the opportunity to photograph GPs, WSBK and other major events – often with special access to various teams and riders.
Collections
Over the past 10 years or so I have been able to visit a large number of museums and private collections and photograph individual bikes as well as more general views. A few of those shots follow.
Bikes
The bulk of my motorcycle work over recent years has been of individual bikes, usually taken with a portable “studio” setup. I have been lucky enough to have been granted access to some extremely rare, historic and interesting machinery – here in Oz as well as in the US, UK and Europe.
I try my best to record these wonderful bikes with at least some degree of “art”, particularly in the details. It really is a privilege to photograph them!
