[News]

How-To: Create A Transmoto Front Cover

10 years ago | Photos: Andy Wigan

Ever wondered how a Transmoto Dirt Bike Magazine cover comes to fruition? Oh, you have? Good, because we’re about to explain the process to you.

Towards the start of this year, the Transmoto crew was out at Jarrod Bewley’s property in Oberon, NSW shooting our 500cc KTM vs Husaberg vs Husqvarna test. Whenever we run a bike test for the mag, shooting non-action shots of all the bikes is a no-brainer. Below is one of the static shots that Transmoto‘s editor, Andy Wigan, captured out on the test, that would eventually appear in Transmoto Dirt Bike Magazine‘s 2014 April (#42) issue.

cover_01

We got back to the office a couple of days later and downloaded all of the gold we captured. We thought, “Wow, this shot would make an awesome cover,” but Transmoto test pilots and Husqvarna Enduro Racing Team riders, Scotty Keegan and Damian Smith, had put in the hard yards to nail a wicked image with iKapture Images’ Greg Smith at Bewley’s, and we couldn’t simply rob them of their glory.

The concept of a static line-up on the front cover lingered, though. We’d slated a mid-capacity enduro shootout to be printed in the next issue of the mag – and we couldn’t think of a more appropriate time to bring the static cover to life. Transmoto‘s talented Art Director, Wayne Smith (aka Wanye), grabbed the KTM/Husky/’Berg shot from Bewley’s and in five minutes, had a mock-up ready ahead of the mid-capacity shoot, which was to take place at Damian Smith’s property in Jilliby, NSW.

We rocked up at Damo’s bright and early the day of the test, and it felt like it had been raining for weeks. Not drizzling. Not spitting. Not sprinkling. It’d been raining cats and dogs. Biblical shit! This didn’t bother us too much, though. Carting expensive camera gear into a dust storm every other week gets irksome and expensive after a while, so the idea of some mud on the trails seemed like a small price to pay to spare our camera gear from more microscopic abuse.

The problem was, the stretch of chocolate-coloured terra-firma we chose to shoot the cover on near Smith’s was covered in that sticky mud that makes you 10mm taller after each step. So, after 30 minutes’ set-up – and what felt like two hours of carefully brushing the mud out of 10 knobby tyres – we finally had something that resembled our plan for the cover image.

Two of our test riders, Jess Gardiner and Tom Kite, provided the light, Wigan got behind the camera, and his best mate, Alfie, got in the way. But the image was nailed, and we even grabbed some flowers for Smith’s missus on the way out.

cover_02

The last step was taking the image back to designer boy, Wayne Smith. We apologise if you’re starting to get a little confused. Greg Smith, Damian Smith and Wayne Smith are all three separate people, who do very different things for us, and aren’t related in any way!

Wayne-O waved his magic designer wand around the image, placed classy cover lines all over it, and ta-da! Transmoto Dirt Bike Magazine‘s 2014 March (#43) issue had a front cover.

43_Cover Shoot Graphic

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