Royal Enfield ad was fun to recreate

Recreation of classic Royal Enfield advertisement.

You may recognize the motorcycle in this picture — it's a Royal Enfield Bullet — but who is the rider?

The rider is me, trying to recreate the well known Royal Enfield advertising image of the well dressed motorcyclist enjoying a spin on his G2 Bullet.

My motorcycle is not a G2 but a 1999 made-in-India Royal Enfield, about as close as you can come this side of a swinging arm rear suspension.

The gay blade in the 1940s-era advertisement was the creation of an artist who could control perspective, posture and expression without going out in the rain.

Photographer Anna Blasco.

My photographer was my daughter Anna, who had to try to create approximately the same effect by holding her camera on the ground.

The Adobe PhotoShop program did the rest.

I posed with the angle of my head wrong but the thing that bothers me the most is the position of the headlight in the photo. The Bullet's casquette places the headlight higher, but it also looks to me as though the artist tucked the G2 headlight in a bit.

Perhaps he meant to draw your eye away from it to the rider's big smile.

I was holding still for the photo. I have too little hair left for it to blow in the wind (I admit I added a little on top with PhotoShop).

Besides, I was not going to ride a moving Bullet within three feet of my daughter.

Bow tie was rejected.

Anna found the jacket and vest for me in a resale shop, and my wife Bonnie created a cravat for me out of one of her scarves.

A clip-on bow tie and flat cap were considered for the shoot, but ultimately rejected as being not true to the original.

Anna did have the advantage of Florida sunshine for her photo.

I do look happy, don't I?

Should have buttoned that darn jacket.