Marco Prozzo
Profession: Commercial Photographer
Home: Seattle, Washington
Birthplace: New York City, NY
Age: 42
Marital Status: married to the love of his life, Shaun
Children: an American Staffordshire Terrier, Jax, and a Bull Mastiff, Diesel
Years Riding Motorcycles: 20 years, riding about 12,000 miles annually
Current BMW Ride: 2000 1150GS
First Bike: 1982 Yamaha Vision
Motorcycles Owned: eight, including an R100RS, 1100GS, 1150GS

What prompted you to start riding?
I didn’t start riding until I was 22. I always wanted to ride but my parents were never very fond of motorcycling. When I moved out of the house one of the first things I did was to buy a brand new motorcycle. It was a fully faired 550cc 1982 Yamaha Vision. I didn’t know how to ride it but a friend taught me. It was a good bike, although it was a bit big and a bit fast for someone starting out. I remember that it had vents on the lowers that let heat from the engine warm your legs, so I could ride year-round.

Marco lines up a shot for the photo session
he so graciously donated to promote the 
2001 Rally in Redmond, Oregon
Photo by Eric Blume

New York City was a good place to learn to ride because I learned to ride defensively. And contrary to what most people think about New York City drivers, they are some of the best I've ever encountered. They're aggressive but they're very aware. In Seattle, it's the polar opposite, passive and unaware, and that's a bad combination.

Why the move to Seattle? Seattle was kind of a pipe dream for me. I moved here 10 years ago for lifestyle reasons and motorcycling was certainly part of that. I actually rode my motorcycle across the country and arrived here without knowing anyone. My biggest concern was to make a living doing what I love doing, which is photography. Since then, it's turned out better than I could ever have hoped.

How do you feel about riding in the Pacific Northwest?
First of all, members of the BMW community out here are among the friendliest and most enthusiastic riders I've ever met. Secondly, in New York City riding was basically urban combat and it took a tremendous amount of effort to even get out of the city. It's a whole different experience riding out here. One of the great things is that in a very short time you can be at the ocean or the desert or in the mountains. And you can ride all year-round.

What are your favorite roads?
Locally, there's the North Cascades Highway which can get fairly busy in the summer. In the southern part of the state, there's the roads around Mt. Rainier and Mount St. Helens. All over the state there is a wonderful network of fire-roads, as well, that provide acess to some gorgeous, out-of-the-way spots. I've only just started to discover some amazing roads in South-Eastern Washington too. Central Oregon has some wonderful roads out in the desert. But the roads in northern California are truly magnificent! I always say that if God was a motorcycle-riding civil engineer, those are the roads he'd designed.

One of my all-time favorites is Klammath River Highway (Route 96) in Northern California. It's a canyon road that's all sweeping curves and tight bends. It's very sparsely travelled for 166 miles and everything's just laid out perfectly from one end to the other.

What’s your most memorable ride?
It has to be the ride that I got engaged on in 2000. We were on a camping trip in the Napa Valley area and I asked Shaun to marry me in a tent in Mendocino. (They were later married by Wayne Elston, who also happens to be employed by Ride West BMW in Seattle.)

Why did you choose an 1150GS?
I've pretty much ridden every model of BMW. I like each model for its own specific character but I've definitely found my perfect bike in the 1150GS. It does everything, and it does it all very well. I've taken my GS to places where I never imagined I'd be taking it and that's one of the things I've really enjoyed about it.

We just did a great ride in eastern Washington State that was designed as a "GPS Ride" by Tom Myers over at CycoActive in the Seattle area. We rode mostly on ATV and 4WD-designated trails. The mountain pass from Wenatchee to Ellensburg was quite challenging. That comes to mind when I think about roads I wouldn’t take a GS on, but it did pretty well. I managed to destroy the body of my rear Ohlins shock on that trip, as well as having to repair a flat on the road. So it turned out to be a very expensive trip, but it was a lot of fun!

Can you describe your photography career?
Both of my parents are artists so it was a natural direction for me to take. Ultimately, I really wanted to be a painter but I didn't feel that I had the patience for it. I decided to study photography (at the Rochester Institute of Technology) instead. Photography was my way around that frustration as well as allowing me to reproduce things more precisely as a photographic illustrator.

I do a lot of advertising work and a lot of the ads I get called to do are very amusing. For example, one of the assignments I did was for a mortgage company featuring The Three Pigs staring at a brick house with a "Sold" sign out front. The tagline for the ad was: "We can find a home for you no matter who you are".

One of the things that really started me in this direction (surreal illustration) was a brochure I was hired to do for the Seattle Symphony in 1993. All they wanted was eight images about music. I was given completely free reign and that's a dream job to me. Since then I've won awards nationally and internationally and I've worked with some interesting clients (among them IKEA, Microsoft, Agfa, and Bloomberg Personal).

How did you start photographing motorcycles?
Motorcycles and photography have always been my two great passions. I started taking pictures of motorcycles for my local dealer, who I can also call my friends, the good folks at Ride West BMW. (He was an official photographer for the 2001 BMW MOA National Rally) .One of the shots for Ride West BMW was a shot of an LT for a poster. We looked for a straight stretch of road in the mountains to set it up. Then I stood on the passenger seat -- wearing full gear, of course -- and bent over the rider while holding an ultra-wide Hasselblad camera and flash to his chest as we went down the road. It looks and sounds a lot more dangerous than it actually was but we didn't go over 40 mph. That was a lot of fun! I would put my life in the same riders hands again, several years later, when, as a minister, he married my wife and I in a ceremony up on Sunrise (Mt. Rainier).

To get a look at Marco’s surreal photo illustration, check out his home page at www.marcoprozzo.com. For samples of his motorcycle images, including those for Ride West BMW and the 2001 International BMW MOA Rally, see www.imagepond.com (search under the category "Sports"), and also see more work on www.altpick.com