I worked with Scott Pommier this past summer on a magazine photoshoot and I was immediately struck with his creative eye, not to mention a precise professionalism usually reserved for accountants and mob hitmen. Later he sent me some photos of a row of bobber motorcycles he shot at a bike show and I realized his talent lay well beyond simply shooting celebrity actors in fancy clothes (which was our original project). It was fitting then when I found out he was working on his first coffee table book, a vintage bike-themed photo tome titled Chasing Thunder. “I’ve been working on this project for about four years now; I’ve got it assembled and edited and now I’m shopping it around to publishers,” explains Pommier of his pet project. “It’s about the romance of the road and the love of old machines.” Besides having shot covers for every major skateboard magazine, Scott also worked on Carts of Darknessess, a documentary about homeless people that race down hills…in shopping carts, as if that weren’t bad ass enough. Ok then — let’s hear it from him…

What was the inspiration for the project?
I’ve always photographed what I loved, as soon as I got a bike, it was only natural to start taking pictures of motorcycles.

Tell me a bit about your history with motorcycles — what initially drew you to them?
I remember being at a skatepark in Vancouver. I was in town visiting, and I had taken the bus after we were done skating — some friends of mine jumped on their motorcycles and took off, and I remember feeling like a chump. I was never a car guy at all, and it hadn’t really occurred to me that transportation could be fun. That’s when the seed was really planted.

Later I got arrested for trespassing while shooting skateboarding in a schoolyard in Burbank. My car was impounded and my equipment was all seized, so for a month I couldn’t work. That’s when I decided it was time to get a bike and started combing the Cycle Trader.

Continue reading the Q&A with Scott Pommier, plus a bonus gallery of pics from Chasing Thunder, after the Jump…

What are your feelings on the emergence of vintage bike culture — from cafe racers to bobbers, from the bikes themselves to the outgrowth of vintage biker fashion?
I think there are a lot of people who don’t really connect with the era that we’re living in right now. Sure, cell phones and GPS and email make life easier in some fairly substantial ways, but we’ve made convenience and efficiency paramount. We want everything to be cheap and easy. I’m by no means immune, but some things are more precious when they are laborious and expensive. You value something that you’ve spent time and money on, something that was built in an era that placed more of a premium on craftsmanship. I think that’s part of what’s at the heart of the resurgence of old bikes. And I think maybe that’s part of the genesis for the American workwear fashion trend, if I had to hazard a guess.

I saw your bike and it’s a beauty. Who built it, who designed it, and how long did it take to create from start to finish?
Thanks, I love it. The bike is an early 50s Harley, the model name is ‘FL’ but everyone calls them ‘panheads’ because of the way the top of the motor looks — the valve covers look like upside down baking pans. The frame, motor and transmission are all stock, and the front-end is off an earlier Harley, from the 30s or 40s, and someone extended it by an inch or two at some point. The style is influenced by the club bikes you’d find in the Bay Area in the mid to late 60s. The front wheel is taller and skinnier, it’s got a small solo seat, narrow bars, a small tank, mounted so that it lifts up at the front, a narrow rear fender, no front brake. The custom pieces and the paintjob were done by Max Schaaf in Oakland — he’s an incredible painter and bike builder. My friends back in Vancouver have a shop, and they’ve helped me out a ton. I’m no mechanic, I just muddle through and my friends pick up the slack to keep me on the road.

“I bounced along for 40 or 50 feet before I hit something that stopped the bike and bucked me right over the bars.”

When you think back on the trips that were highlighted in this project, what’s your most positive memory?
Probably on the Ashcroft Run, in 2008. There were eight of us on the trip, and we stopped in somewhere to get something to eat. It had been a really long day on the road, fraught with breakdowns; it had been really frustrating and at times pretty cold through the mountain passes. Just as we were leaving to go find a campspot, it was starting to get dark, and this biker pulled up asking about something — maybe he was just checking out the bikes — but my friend Chris started talking to him, and he told him about this bar we should ride out to. It was farther than we’d planned on going, Chris’ headlight had gone out, so we weren’t keen to ride too far in the dark. But he made it sound pretty good, so we decided to give it a shot. Chris rode right beside me to share my headlight, the whole way we were winding our way into a valley so it just kept getting warmer and warmer, and finally we got to this quaint little converted farm house — equal parts biker bar and bed & breakfast called the Gold Dust Saloon. Free pool, this amazing local beer on tap, and it was Friday night, so they had a weekly jam going. We basically took over the place. Chris and his brother got up and played with the locals, we stayed up singing and dancing into the wee hours of the morning, and the owner, an old biker, let us sleep out on the lawn; it was so mild out you didn’t even need a sleeping bag. I woke up to a warm summer breeze, I looked out and it was just incredible: we were in the prettiest spot, surrounded by hills, and small farms, horses by the fence, an old truck parked beside all our bikes lined up in a row. Chris woke up at the same time, rubbed his eyes, and said “Maybe we didn’t make that last corner last night and we all crashed and died and ended up here.” Biker heaven.

That sounds pretty idyllic — like the final couplet out of a romantic biker poem! What was the most trouble or danger  you encountered?
My first year riding I skidded on a little gravel going into a corner, and I kind of panicked. I straightened the bike up and rode across the center line and right off the opposite shoulder and dropped down into a ditch, which was overgrown with grass so you couldn’t see all the bumps and rocks at the bottom. I bounced along for 40 or 50 feet, trying to keep the bike upright before I hit something that stopped the bike and bucked me right over the bars. I had a large format camera in the saddlebag, the glass back was smashed, and I got some dirt in my air cleaner. That was about the extent of the damage. I had a hell of a time getting the bike out of the ditch though; a farmer came out and helped me. He said they pull someone out of the ditch at least once every two weeks.

There’s a beautiful shot of a rider going up a bank on a highway — where was that shot?
That’s Max, we shot it in San Jose. I tagged along on a ride he put together with some friends. Oakland to Paso Robles, there were five of us, and we pulled off at what turned out to be the wrong exit. But the off-ramp had this giant white concrete embankment; I knew as soon as Max saw it he was going to hit it. So I reached for my camera, which was around my neck, but I just didn’t have time to get the photo. So I had to talk Max into going back for the photo another day. I would have loved to catch it spontaneously, but I really like that shot as it is. I couldn’t have shot something like that from the bike. When we went back it was frantic; he went at that thing pretty fast. I just had to run into place, frame it up quickly, guess where I should focus — and he flew by, and that was it.

What was it that initially drew you to photography? Do you remember the first photo you took that made you realize you may have some talent?
I don’t know that I was actually worried about whether or not I had talent. I just wanted to figure out the mechanics so that I could shoot a photo that looked like what I saw in the skateboarding magazines that I would read incessantly. I think I probably shot for ten years before it finally clicked for me, and I realized how I wanted to shoot.

And lastly, if you were lost in a supermarket, in what aisle would we find you in?
If I’m lost it’s probably because I’m searching frantically for some hummus — is it in the deli? Is it in with the cream cheese and spreadables? Is it by the vegetables in a health food section? By the olive bar?