Quarterpipes and Shad’s Stairs
A 4th of July (3rd actually) gathering/jam of sorts went down at Shad Johnson’s house in Portland earlier today. Actually, it’s probably still going on… I had to leave after about an hour to spend the day sitting in an aiport on my way to Vegas for Lavin’s jam. I didn’t expect there to be much of anything set up, so I figured it would be more of a BBQ, but the boys had built two 8-foot wide 8-foot tall quarterpipes, one on each side of Shad’s front stairs. Awesome set up. Really awesome. By the time they got it all built I had about a half hour to shoot a couple pictures before cruising to the airport. Not much time, considering nobody had even touched the ramps yet at that point. But even still we managed to get a few shots. Roman Tencza (above) was killing it. Flair over the channel, tailwhip over the channel… he didn’t even need a shirt.
Just as I was leaving one of the local street dudes, Tony, ate shit messing around on the long jump they had set up, and smacked the back of his head on the road. Blood everywhere. Ambulance. No good. From what I hear Tony got some staples in his skull, but was otherwise okay from a head injury standpoint. Hopefully that’s true. Check out a few shots after the jump, and keep your eye on the Goods BMX blog for videos which will likely surface shortly from some of the locals. Read more…
One Hour with Ben Hucke
One Hour With Ben Hucke from Souney Media on Vimeo.
Went out this morning and filmed this short edit with Haro rider Ben Hucke a few blocks from my house. One spot, one morning, one hour (ish). Just another day of shredding…
I posted a few photos of Ben recently you should check as well here. You can also watch this video on YouTube and on BFD.com.
From the Archives: Props Megatour 2007
Back in the Spring of ‘07 I went on the Props Megatour, riding along with the Woodward Camp Team (the tour takes several teams along each with a Videographer, and some with a photographer). Since at the time I was living out by Woodward East, and Woodward is one of my clients, they asked me to go along as the photographer, which I guess makes perfect sense. Some of the photos from the trip were used for a feature in BMX Plus Magazine, and one of them was used on the cover of a separate issue (a photo of Quincy Dean barspinning over a rail which appears in the gallery here). I put together some of my favorite shots from that trip, some of which appeared in the magazine story, some of which didn’t. The trip included Zack Warden, Chad Kagy, Quincy Dean, Ron Thomas, Ben Kellgren, and myself (I’ve also included photos of Dave Mirra and Sean Sexton) and traveled through the Southeast beginning in Greenville, NC and taking us down through Georgia. A great time indeed. We hit a lot of rain, so we ended up indoors more than we would have liked, but we got some great stuff along the way. Check out the gallery after the jump. Read more…
iPhone-tography Part Two
I’ve been taking as many photos (okay more photos) with my iPhone camera lately as I have with my “real” camera. It’s always in my pocket, and using one of more of the the many available apps — I discussed some of these in my earlier post here — you can get some pretty darn nice shots with the thing. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I upload these directly to the web in many cases (if you do you may have seen some or all of these already).
All of these shots are shown straight from the phone, in other words, the “look” was achieved using the available apps, and no “computer post” was done. I recently got the iPhone 3GS and the camera is definitely better, but in many cases still requires the finesse of the apps to get some extra punch. It’s not tack sharp, and it’s not perfect, but that’s part of the fun of these types of cameras, to me anyway. Check out some more shots from the last couple months after the jump. Read more…
Aaron’s Volume
Aaron makes the coffee downstairs at Sweetpea, or at least a lot of it, or when he’s here anyway. He also has incredibly large holes in his ears. Aaron got a new glow in the dark Volume Cutter Track frame, and needed a shot for a fixed gear site, so here’s one of them. He’s also wearing a YoBeat shirt I designed a while back. Simple light set up as all my studio gear was loaded up for a shoot. Single on camera flash bounced into an overhead reflector. I actually like this look a lot for editorial type stuff. Note: Obviously the frame isn’t glowing, it’s not dark!
Bigger Wheels
I recently reconnected with MTB filmer Aaron Lutze, who I met a few years back while he was living out in Central, PA. Aaron also lives in Portland, and has a fun little pump track at his house which we ride when we’re all in town. He’s been filming a MTB how-to video, and needed a photographer to go up to Seattle and shoot with him last weekend. Despite a rainy/cloudy/sunny/rainy again/sunny again style day, we got a few decent shots. The shot above is Haro rider Phil Sunbaum amidst some of the production stuff and mud. Scissor lift and everything.
Dig Shooter
Dig Magazine just posted up a “Shooter” interview with me over on its site. I’ve shot stuff for those guys for a long time, and they’ve been doing good stuff over at that magazine since the mid-90s. Check out the interview here.
I also directed a strangely awkward interview which is up over on snowboard site YoBeat in which Internet Celebrity Sarah Morrison interviews Snowboard Legend Peter Line. It is awkward, makes no sense, and they are smoking while sitting next to a gas can. So in other words I’m happy with it. You won’t learn anything watching it. But there are some funny moments. I also filmed a little documentary style interview with Sarah while she was in town which should be pretty interesting as soon as I can get around to editing it.
Donald Skatepark Pool Jam Photo Gallery
Drained backyard swimming pools of abandoned houses are paradise for BMXers and Skateboarders. For some riders like Dean Dickinson (pictured above in a high-speed no-footed can-can carve), the search for new and untouched pools never ends. Drain it, ride it, and add it to the list of fun ones.
Dean put together a Jam this past weekend at the Donald, Oregon skatepark which features a replica of the infamous Nude Bowl from the 80s and early 90s (a California pool which had legendary sessions). Donald is a small town of just over 1000 people, about 20 minutes South of Portland. A small, suburb with arguably one of the best and most authentic skatepark pools in existence. About twenty of us went down from Portland, and I’d guess the park saw maybe three other people pass through all day. Amazing. Private session. Read more…
Why Not Save That Photo for Print?
Editors Note: This is a discussion about editorial, mostly in the Action Sports genre. Obviously commissioned advertising is a different beast. Those images are created to promote or sell a product, and out of respect to the clients needs posting them isn’t an option, at least until after the campaign has run.
I’ve been posting a lot of original content/photos on here and on other sites that I could have saved for exclusive print use. Print magazines, at least in action sports, are concerned that contributions aren’t going to be seen prior to the magazine’s release. This use to be justifiable. But I think that’s changed, as all media has changed. So why not just hold stuff for print? There are a lot of answers to that question, but audience has been a big influence on my decisions to “let content out of the bag” online immediately. I’m not arguing that images shouldn’t go to print, I’m arguing that in many cases they are no less valuable to a print audience if they’ve been viewed on line. In many cases the two uses can benefit each other. One is a quality, tactile experience, the other is immediate.
Another upside to posting online is I can be my own editor. Magazines are — and should be — extensions of the people who produce them. Every photo editor has his or her own vision, and a style of image/subject they prefer. That doesn’t always mesh with what I think makes a good image, so here I can make my own decisions. I don’t have to worry about what’s “cool” in other peoples mind. This is not to say I intend to immediately publish everything I shoot on the web, it’s an explanation of why, in my opinion it’s a valid outlet, and wouldn’t make those photos any less relevant to a print use down the road (again, in my opinion). Of course, with contributions to other online sites there are photo editors who will make choices on usage.
The third, and one of the most important aspects to delivering content to an online audience is the ability to create online dialogue with viewers immediately. Comments back and forth ad a new dynamic between viewers and the content. Reader mail in print just didn’t have the same energy. Viewers can not online interact with the content, they can share opinions with each other. For better or worse, it’s a new frontier.
Print publications are limited in terms of audience. This is a fact.
Printing runs and distribution confine the audience of a print publication. Even in a media-rich city like Portland, Oregon, I often have to seek out print titles when I’m looking for them. Newsstand options are shrinking, so the audience narrows more each day. While that fact is disappointing, it is a reality. And it’s not a print is dying argument, it’s a “Media as we know it is dying” argument. Online media is changing as fast as print. Music, film… all this stuff is changing. New methods of delivery are altering the way information is consumed. And that information needs to hit now. Beyond that, user interaction with that information online brings content to the next level.
I’ve had a few experiences lately where budget-restricted print publications have held onto photographs with the intention of using them in upcoming issues. For whatever reason, if they decide not use them at some point (be it for contributor budget reasons, content reasons, etc.) it’s often months down the line before I find that out. In today’s world, by then the shots are dated. From a photography standpoint they can still be great, but from a timeliness standpoint they’re not as relevant to a viewer. People expect information right away. And with the new methods of delivery, they deserve it. Read more…
Cincinnati ASA Action Sports World Tour
The latest ASA Action Sports World Tour stop took place out in Cincinnati, Ohio at Kings Island. I’ve been shooting the events this year for BFD.com (where you can see full coverage) and I’ve embedded the BFD photo galleries for Skate and BMX vert below. I’m a bit late to the punch here… I posted these to BFD the night of the event, but kept forgetting to put them here as well. Cincinnati was vert only, and the contests were awesome. From Steve McCann’s absolutely perfect triple tailwhip to Danny Mayer’s kickflip McTwist, there was a lot to take in. You can watch the videos of the top three runs at BFD.com as well. The photo above is Simon Tabron. Check out the galleries after the jump. Read more…
How Street It Is.
The sun is back in Portland, so it’s time to get outdoors and shoot. I went out to ride/shoot with Ryan Sher and Ben Hucke this past weekend. Ben spent much of the rainy months driving around scouting for spots, and he was nice enough to [reluctantly] let Ryan in on them as well. The wallride gap Ryan’s hitting (above) is one of Ben’s secret rainy day spots.
After an early session at my favorite skatepark in Oregon, West Linn (the photo of Ryan below is at West Linn: Pocket air lookback over the gap from right to left), we headed off to street spot number one: A sign that you had to hop up onto, then it became a big wedge you could theoretically launch off of. Ben fast-planted off the top of it after he had figured out the speed/bunnyhop ratioand dodged traffic. Big hop up, followed by a somewhat springy sign. After that it was off to the wallride gap (above) which Ryan did several times. If you follow any of us on Twitter (and you should) you already saw pictures of the gap. So good, but the hot asphalt was no fun to be laying on for the photo. Ben found a few other fun little nibbles, and fired out the Ruben-style wallride below. After that we had to call it quits do to the heat (yes, heat in Oregon). Read more…
Forest Grove Jam 2009
2009 Forest Grove BMX Jam from Souney Media on Vimeo.
Odyssey BMX product designer Ben Ward is originally from Forest Grove, Oregon and helped design the skatepark there a few years back. Every summer he comes home for a week of vacation and holds a jam at the park. I missed out last year, but this year I was in town and the weather was perfect. A bunch of local Pros and shredders showed up and killed it, including some names from the past… you’ll see a Jeremy Davis toothpick grind in there if you pay attention. I didn’t shoot any photos, but made this little video edit instead. You can also check it out at BFD.com along with a bunch of cool videos from the recent Action Sports World Tour stops.
Conversation: Shad Johnson
Conversation: Shad Johnson, Owner Goods BMX from Souney Media on Vimeo.
I watch a lot of documentaries and I love interviews. Studs Terkel’s book of interviews, “Working,” is among one of my favorites. Sometimes hearing people talk about their work is more interesting the work itself. There’s always something interesting in there. Terkel’s book “Working” is a collection of interviews with people from all walks of life, from a grocery bagger to a piano tuner. They’re all interesting in their own right.
Bike shops, especially BMX specific shops, are by no means a gold mine. Opening one is never a get-rich-quick scheme, and if that’s your motivation you’re in for a suprise. It’s a labor of love that can quickly turn into a financial headache and a babysitting service. But it can work, and it can work well.
At the core of every good BMX scene through the years has been a shop holding things together. Would Austin, TX have become the BMX Mecca that it did without Trend Bike Source, and later Empire BMX? Goods BMX, started four years ago, is that shop for the Portland BMX scene.
I wanted to find out what goes through the head of someone starting a BMX shop… what’s the motivation. I’ve known Shad for a long time, well before I moved up to Portland. He’s shot photos and made videos of the BMX scene up here for years, and his video Blueprint in the late 90s pretty much put the Northwest BMX scene on the map. We talked about the shop, as well as his collection of old magazines and bikes from the 80s and 90s.
Sophisticated?
From 2005-2007 I helped publish seven issues of a magazine called Sophisticated Rider with Pro BMX rider John Parker and Pro Skateboarder/Writer/Commentator Paul Zitzer. The magazine focused on Skate, BMX and FMX (the winter issues had a bit of snow as well)… an Extreme round-up as Zitzer would call it. All seven issues were distributed for free at skateparks around the US (and beyond).
About two years ago we decided the amount of work vs. the costs involved were getting to be too much. We didn’t have anyone focused on selling advertising, and none of us wanted to deal with that end, so we put the project on indefinite hiatus. Read more…
Conversation: David Benedek
Recently I’ve wanted to start doing some more visual interviews with people who roll through the studio. Rather than just a standard Q&A, or a still photo, I wanted to use the internet to its fullest and get a little more personality out of the interviews. Sit down style, one-sided conversations.
The first victim is Pro Snowboarder/ filmmaker David Benedek for YoBeat (portrait above by Brooke Geery). David hails from Germany and speaks English better than most of the people in Portland. He was in town for a Bonfire photoshoot and since Bonfire is a few blocks from our office, he was nice enough to stop in. David is the mastermind behind such snowboard films as 91 Words For Snow and In Short, and was the first person to land a double-cork 1260 on snow.
Since David is a darn smart dude, and had a lot of good shit to say, this interview is broken up into two parts. Part One focuses on Snowboarding specifically. Part Two touches on filmmaking, new media, and more. If you’re into snowboarding and or media/film/internet, you might find these interesting.
You can check them out on YoBeat here or watch them below after the jump. Read more…
More Bikes in the Studio
A few more bikes from some recent studio shoots with local builders. These bikes are by Hufnagel and Argonaut. I’ve been shooting a lot of bikes for these guys and others lately, and since each bike is a unique build, the photos tend to focus on the unique elements of each. Read more…
Hectic Spring Event Travel
The past two weeks I’ve been busy bouncing around photographing the ASA Action Sports World Tour. Last week I was down in San Diego for a Freestyle Motocross contest, then a few days ago I was out in Minneapolis for a Skateboard Vert and BMX Jumping contest. Later this week I’m off to Chicago for a little more of the same. You can check out a few more shots after the jump from both events, including DJ Paul Oakenfold and Theory of a Deadman. Read more…
Weekend Skate Video
Dude Ranch Mini Ramp: Portland from Souney Media on Vimeo.
I got a new Panasonic HMC150 HD camera for the office last week and hadn’t filmed anything with it yet, so I brought it over to a mini ramp skate session here in Portland. I don’t have the fisheye for it yet, so the fisheye clips are shot with a different camera, but some of the longer stuff in this is the HMC150. It films everything to SD card as opposed to the HVX which uses the P2 cards… I’m already a big fan of this camera. If you want to watch the HD clip, view it on Vimeo.
Bruce Outtake
I shot a Federal Bikes ad recently with Bruce Crisman… While we were out shooting Bruce 360′d this ridiculous gap off the ledge, over the grass/weeds and clutter of bikes and bike racks, into the roadway below. Enormous. And all while hundreds of confused students mingled all over the place. The photo we used for the ad was a completely different spot, and a photo I liked much better “photographically” but this was too nuts of a trick to sit there on my hard drive.
Also, I’ve got an interview on the BMX site The Come Up talking about BMX, media etc.
Yesterday’s News: What About the Weeklies?
I don’t want yesterday’s news. It’s not that what happened yesterday isn’t relevant, it’s just that I’ve already seen it and read it several times over the course of, well, yesterday. Google News, Yahoo, BBC, Twitter, RSS feeds, Yelp, etc… Timely news is on my desk almost immediately as it happens. Thus is the very problem with daily newspapers, a market which dwindling — daily.
So what about weeklies? We have two alternative weeklies here in Portland: The Portland Mercury and the Willamette Week. Other major cities have at least one as well: The Boston Phoenix, Village Voice, LA Weekly, Austin Chronicle, they are everywhere. Distributed for free, they’re generally full of locally focussed feature articles with skewed locally focused advertising. By design and by content they’re often more progressive than their daily cousin. They give a reader something to do at lunch. Or at the coffee shop. Or the bus stop. They’re as much entertainment outlets as they are news. They cover everything from politics to what’s going on in arts and entertainment that week.
While some weeklies like the Boston Phoenix have weathered the economic downturn (and the current internet trends) by cutting sections — the Phoenix cut from four sections per week down to two mostly black and white — others like LA’s City Beat have pulled the plug. But for the most part they seem to be weathering the the collapse of newspapers, albeit while suffering from some cutbacks, at least for now. Read more…
Bicycle Portraits
Portland has a huge community of hand-built bike builders, many of whom are world renowned, building custom bikes for people all over the world. I started shooting some stuff for Jordan Hufnagel last year, and since then a few of his cohorts have hit me up for shots of their bikes when they’re completed. Two weeks ago there were 8 or 9 bikes in the office over the course of the week, as the guys had all just returned from a hand-built show in the mid-west. Before the bikes were sent to the owners, they got photographed in the studio. Read more…
Old School BMX Reunion: Woodward West
A few months back when Steve Swope sent me a note about an old school BMX gathering he was planning at Woodward West, I figured it would be a fun group of 20 or 30 people I see semi-regularly anyway. As a result of sites like Facebook, a number of riders from the past have reconnected, and quickly the gathering grew to over 200 attendees.
I’ve gotten to meet a lot of the guys I read about as a kid from working in the BMX industry for the past decade (Wilkerson, McCoy, etc), but many of them still remained mysterious. A number of legends from the past turned up from Ron Wilkerson, Dennis McCoy, Brian Blyther, Lee Reynolds, Dave Voelker, Eddie Fiola, Dave Nourie, Rich Sigur, Gary Laurent, Hugo Gonzalez, Mike Dominguez and Marty Schlesinger to the man who started it all, Bob Haro. Artist Rich Hanson and one of the original BMX photographers, John Ker were there along with Europeans like Bart DeJong, Stephen Prantl and Andy Zeiss.
The riding sessions felt just like the old days… all fun. It didn’t matter what your bike looked like, or what kinds of tricks you still had in your bag, everyone was just there to have fun. The weekend was open (by invitation) to those over 32 who had kept a strong connection to BMX freestyle over the years.
Lee Reynolds and Ron Wilkerson showed some of the newer school old schoolers like Kevin Robinson, Simon Tabron, Brian “Yellow” Gavigan, and Lip Lord Jay Eggleston that they still could hang on a vert ramp after all these years. Even when the others had worn out and taken off their pads, 43 year old Ron Wilkerson was still up on the ramp by himself blasting well above head height.
Some guys rode a lot, some just hung out, but it didn’t matter either way. After a long day of riding Saturday, everyone converged on the Lodge for a reunion party complete with a slide show, videos playing, and even an impromtu bar floor flatland demo from Dave Nourie. Read more…
Taj - Austin, TX - 2002
Dug this one up out of the files the other day. Taj Mihelich (and Roscoe running toward me), from a shoot on the Terrible One ramp down in Austin, Texas back in 2002. At that time I was the main BMX photographer for the Etnies team. I was down in Austin quite a bit since a good portion of the team was living there at the time, and Taj was one of the “main guys” on the the team. Right before I left for this trip PETA called me asking if I knew any BMXers that would be good for its ad campaign. Taj was a Vegetarian, and treated his dog Roscoe pretty well (note: the dog in the bike trailer in his part in the Etnies video was a doll, not a real dog) so I suggested him. Anyway, this was shot during the PETA shoot (the ad they ran is after the jump). I don’t think anything from this particular angle ever got used for anything, but I always liked this one, mostly cause of Roscoe creeping in the foreground. Read more…
Bully Resurrected
An Old School BMX reunion is happening next weekend at Woodward West. Confirmed attendence (including myself of course) is now around 180 riders, over the age of 32. We’re talking legends all hanging out in one room. It’s going to be nuts. You can find out more info here.
As a prelude to that, we’ve got a little homage to a bike that in many ways changed the course of BMX freestyle in the late 80s/early 90s… the Bully. Shad Johnson, the owner of Goods BMX here in Portland, has several amazing old school bikes in the shop, and recently built up a Bully very similar to one he had in 1990. Shad was itchin’ to get some pictures on the thing, so we brought it out to a backyard ramp to get the true “feel of the time.” Read more…
The Draino and John Parker
I first saw John Parker try a body varial — or Draino as he calls it — around 1994 or so. Since then, I saw him try it a number of times, coming very, very close on several attempts (as close as a dab of the foot) but close doesn’t quite count. At some point when you’re that close, it’s got to happen. Fast Forward.
In 2006 John and I were shooting for a Ride (UK) interview that never materialized. I think he ended up getting hurt part way through the year and we just hadn’t shot enough different stuff. However, the one thing he really wanted to get done we did get — the Draino. He’d been trying them and getting consistent with them in the foam at Woodward, and if there was one trick he wanted to get for the interview, the Draino was it. It had been looming over his head for 13 years, and numerous attempts.
You can’t really work up to a trick like the Draino. You either get all the way around, or you fall out of the sky, or go down with the ship. The day we shot these made me cringe more than I ever have before. Five or six of the attempts were five or six of the hardest crashes I have ever seen. We’re talking career ending shit for most people. Parker walked away from all of them, some with a smile on his face. I don’t get it. Tough as nails. After several “should be in the ER” type crashes, he got it done. The first and only time it has happened on a vert ramp (since then Kyle Loza has done a similar body varial on a motorcycle to win the X Games — a guy named Jeff Harris from Texas used to try and get very, very close off jumps on a BMX bike in the early 90s). Read more…
