Shinya Kimura

When I rolled into the CSC plant yesterday, Steve 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.  Our interest was in getting Shinya and his friends to ride our sample Café Racers for a photo shoot.  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.

Later that day I Googled Shinya Kimura.  It’s good I did this later, as I might have spent more time asking him questions than taking photos, and the photos are amazing.  I didn’t know anything about Mr. Kimura, but my quick Google search showed me that this man is the real deal.   Allow me to share this video with you, which I thoroughly enjoyed watching each of the times I viewed it (and I’ve done so many times since yesterday)…

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…

Steve and Shinya were having a nice conversation.  Me?  I was lost in the wonder of this little slice of motorcycle Nirvana.   I guess it 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…

You’ll be hearing more about Mr. Kimura on this blog, folks.  It was a grand morning.