DELETEDSCENES

Ride Or Die

A previous motorcycle photo shoot, with me hanging out of a car, hadn’t turned out that well, and I figured shooting from a motorcycle’s sidecar would help me get the photo I was after. A friend in Denton with a Ural Sidecar Motorcycle answered my call, and I offered to repay him in beer. We met up with salon owner/motorcycle enthusiast Annette Jensen near Jefferson Boulevard. Between her chopper and the Ural, we drew a lot of stares. I tried to direct Annette and my friend as to where the bikes needed to align so I could get the picture I wanted. Shooting was considerably more challenging than expected: The Ural was an unstable platform. I’d hoped to shoot using longer shutter speeds to create motion blur and communicate action, but my shots started off as blurry smears. I had to hike up my shutter speed to get acceptable photos. Also, the bikes were very loud, so we all had to communicate with improvised hand signals. On our final pass down Jefferson, I opted to lean out of the sidecar as far as possible in order to get a low, wide-angle shot of Annette looking like the badass she is. This may not have been the safest decision, but photography seems to work that way from time to time. While rolling back to our starting point, my friend thought it would be fun to jerk the bike onto two wheels, suspending me midair. I gripped the sidecar and remember saying, “You bastard,” before he plopped it back down. Afterwards, my friend and I went to an Oak Cliff bar, where I had to disuade him from starting a fistfight with the bartender.

—Danny Fulgencio