Joe - A portrait of a portrait

I've had the idea for a series of portraits of people with their toys for along time. The idea is the guy in the space that they keep or wrench on their favorite thing to wrench on. Guy, garage, motorcycle.
Of course it could be Woman, army tank, blimp hangar but you get the idea. The pic above is of my buddy Joe in his garage with his three vintage Japanese bikes and one of his VW's. Not the strongest compostition but I was really trying to see if I could show up, light a portrait, and get out in a reasonable amount of time. The lighting part was acceptable. The reasonable amount of time part...not so much. I had some trouble figuring out how to light it. I think I started a little too complicated and then I some gear issues. I have since sorted the issues thanks to Joe's patience and a little time on the couch blinding my cats with strobes trying to figure out what works with what. Here's where I started lighting wise -

Pretty dramatic yes, but I was just going for the main light here and I was going to add other lights. When the "other lights" part failed I jumped ship and went to what I new would work.

Not too bad. Needs a little separation between Joe and the wall. About a thousand tries later I got:

Other than it looks like Joe just crapped an atom bomb its not a bad effect. A few more million shots and some flagging of the strobe behind Joe and I got the pic you see all the way up at the top. I did turn on the lights in the garage which added a little warmth. You can see how the second pic is a little colder. I also opened a side door which let in some ambient light and filled between the bikes. I think the exercise was a success even if it was not quite what I had in mind at first. At least I have a good guinea pig in Joe. He's got plenty of other interesting crap laying around to photograph too. Thanks, Buddy.