The studio · Station Road, Austin
Three people, one 2.7-metre sweep, and every bike shot the same way since 2016.
Velorenta is a bicycle photography studio in Austin that does bikes and sports gear and turns everything else down. One photographer, one second shooter who also retouches, one person on bookings and pickups. That is the whole company.
- Garage 2016
- Station Road 2021
- Three people
- One sweep, 2.7 m
- 70mm at hub height
- Dust out, wear in
- No HDR
- Retouch rules on every invoice
Velorenta is a trading name, a room and three people
Velorenta trades at velorenta.us and works out of 3 Station Road, Office 12, Austin, Texas 21868, United States. It is a small service business: photography of bicycles and sports equipment, for private sellers, bike shops, online stores and rental outfits in and around Austin. We sell no bikes. We rent no bikes. Nothing is paid for on this website, and every job starts as an inquiry that ends in a written figure.
The man in the photograph above runs the camera. He set the method the studio still works to: drive side first, 70mm, hub height, nine frames. If you book a catalogue series, he is the one who shoots the first bike and locks the tripod height with tape so the fortieth bike matches it.
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Lead photographer
Shoots every studio job and most fleet visits. Owns the shot plan and signs off each set before it leaves. Started the business in the garage in 2016.
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Second shooter & retoucher
Handles detail frames, serial shots and the scale rule, then does all retouching. Dust and background only. Writes the retouch line on the invoice.
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Bookings & pickups
Answers the phone and the inbox, confirms figures in writing, drives the van for pickups inside 25 miles and checks each bike in with a tag and a condition note.
Bike product photography, and nothing beside it
Five jobs, all of them bicycles or the kit that goes with them. A listing set is nine frames of one bike for a private sale or a shop’s used stock, from $85 per bike at studio drop-off. A catalogue series is matched product-card frames on the sweep for shops, $65 per SKU from ten SKUs and $90 below that. A rental fleet visit covers up to 15 bikes at your yard in a half day, from $480 within 25 miles. Sports equipment still life is helmets, shoes, wheels, racks and paddles under a fixed 45° key light, from $35 an item with a minimum of six. An on-location session is two hours outdoors from $220, plus $0.70 a mile past 25 miles.
Every one of those figures is a basis. The number you pay comes back in writing once we know the count and where the bikes are. The full breakdown, with frame counts and who pays travel, sits on the services and price bases page.
Files arrive in two working days as 3000 px JPEGs, plus a 1600 px set for marketplaces that squash everything anyway. We do not do weddings, portraits for hire, real estate, product work that is not sport, or drone footage. People ask. The answer does not change.
Two addresses in ten years, and the method never moved
The studio got bigger. The shot plan did not. A bike we photographed in the garage and one we shoot this week would sit side by side in a catalogue without anyone noticing.
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2016
A one-car garage and a roll of paper
It started with friends selling used bikes and getting nothing but questions from buyers. What size is it? Is that a crack or just a shadow on the down tube? So the first rule was simple: photograph the answers before anyone asks. The garage held one bike at a time, one roll of seamless paper taped to the wall and a borrowed strip light. Ceiling height set the limit on the sweep, and a bike wider than the paper meant shooting at an angle we did not like. We shot anyway, and wrote down what went wrong.
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2021
Office 12, Station Road
Shops started sending bikes in tens and twenties, and the garage could not hold a queue. The move to 3 Station Road gave us a north window, a proper 2.7 m sweep, room for a turntable and a wall to lean the next three bikes against while the current one is on set. It also gave us a door the van can back up to. Drop-offs and collections now happen there, by appointment.
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Now
Three people and a fixed plan
Nine frames per bike, drive side first, always. A catalogue run of forty bikes keeps one camera height and one focal length from the first frame to the last. Fleet visits go out in the van with the portable kit. The rest of the time the studio is a quiet room with bikes along one wall and a sweep along the other.
Scratches stay in. If the buyer finds one we hid, the bike comes back to you, not to us.Retouching rule, printed on every Velorenta invoice
The kit, listed plainly
Nothing exotic. The point of the list is repeatability: the same body, the same lens setting and the same lights on bike one and bike forty.
Cameras
- 2 × full-frame bodies, one on set, one spare
- Tethered to a laptop for focus checks
- Shooting RAW, delivered as JPEG
Lenses
- Standard zoom, taped at 70mm
- Macro for drivetrain, brakes, serial
- Working distance 4.2 m for a whole bike
Light
- North window, daylight
- 2 × tall strip softboxes
- 1 × key fixed at 45° for gear
- No flash on location unless asked
Set
- Paper sweep, 2.7 m wide
- Low turntable for catalogue runs
- Display stand, no kickstand in frame
- 1-metre folding rule for the scale shot
Support
- Tripod, column locked at 34 cm hub height
- Floor marks for bike and camera position
- Grey card at the start of each series
For fleet visits
- Portable stand and folding rule
- One strip light on battery
- Tripod and tape measure
- The clean pavement is yours to provide
Where the retouch stops
Removed. Dust on the frame and the sweep. Fingerprints on a polished top tube. The edge of the paper where it runs out, a stray cable, a stand leg if it creeps into frame. On catalogue work we also clean the background to an even tone so forty product cards sit together.
Left in. Scratches, chips, a scuffed chainstay, worn brake pads, a bent derailleur hanger, sun-faded bar tape. On a used bike that is the information the buyer is paying attention to. A listing photo that hides a scuffed chainstay causes a return, and returns are the seller’s cost.
Not done. No HDR. It makes chrome look like plastic and turns frame paint a colour it has never been. No sky replacement on location shoots, no changed tyre colours, no added reflections. No lens corrections that would change how long a frame looks; we shoot at 70mm from 4.2 metres back so a 56 cm frame still looks like a 56 cm frame.
On the invoice. Every invoice carries one line stating what was retouched on that job. If a buyer ever asks you whether the photos were edited, you can hand them the answer.
- Dust removed
- Background cleaned
- Scratches kept
- Serial visible
- No sky swaps
- No HDR
- Reshoot within 14 days
Call, write, or bring the bike to Station Road
A person answers. Usually the one who does bookings, sometimes the photographer between frames. We reply on working days, by phone or email, and a confirmed figure always follows in writing.
Best for fleets and catalogue runs. Send the count, the sizes and a phone snap of one bike.
Studio
Drop-off and collection by appointment. We agree the time when we confirm the booking.
3 Station Road, Office 12Austin, Texas 21868
United States