Back in the warmth of summer we ventured to the beautiful Peak District to shoot Royal Enfield's latest motorcycle, the Meteor 350, in it's pre-production guise.
A "recce" mission the day before the shoot was essential to find perfect locations for a busy day ahead, which also involved sharing the bikes and riders with a film crew and drone pilot in a monster pick-up truck. The crew's work should be familiar to most as they often spend their time filming cars for Top Gear. We kept the two test riders busy all day as they tirelessly rode up and down non-stop to ensure we got the shots we needed. Rain, sun and cloud were ever changing. This provided some beautiful, if challenging, light to work with. Motorcycle photography is never straightforward and hanging out of the back of an estate car wearing a harness to get the moving shots always entertains the riders and passers-by. We didn't disappoint.
The Meteor 350 represents the spirit of a cruising motorcycle with classic contours and design cues which trace their origins back to earlier classic Royal Enfield bikes. The design may be retro but the engineering is absolutely bang-up-to-date with a new frame, engine, ABS and a very clever GPS navigation system. The concept was a collaboration between the UK and Indian design studios who worked seamlessly together digitally on a daily basis and the machines themselves are all manufactured in India. The design was led by our good friend and colleague Ian Wride who studied transport design at Northumbria University.
We had to keep our photography under wraps for months until the bike was finally unveiled with delays due to COVID, but it's now out there and is selling like hot cakes with orders taken for 26K units within the first 30 days of the launch.
The photographs have been used for the bike launch, website and social media platforms and have been very well received all over the world.
Click on each image to see them in their full-screen glory.
Check out some the video work taken by the film crew here: https://youtu.be/NhffcQdpFPA
And Royal Enfield's site here: https://www.royalenfield.com/uk/en/home/
