From the Archives: Ryan Sher, 2001-2002
While I was living in California in the early 2000′s, Ryan Sher moved to San Diego from New England. Ryan was riding for Kink Bikes, and moved in with fellow Kink rider Jimmy Buchans. We’d gone on a few Kink road trips together (I was working at Ride Magazine and doing a lot of photo work for Kink as well), and I was making regular trips down to San Diego already to shoot with the guys down that, so I began shooting with Ryan quite a bit. I also posted a few old photos of Ryan here from a Kink trip a few months ago. There are also some newer shots of Ryan here and here.
The photo above was almost the cover of Ride BMX Issue 62, also known as the July 2001 issue. The scan I had of it was labeled Cov-2, meaning we had two or three images picked out for that cover, this being the second of them. It’s not that epic photographically, though it’s a darn good X-up seatgrab. On the mock up the art directors cropped it into a vertical shot I think. Ultimately, Allan Cooke ended up on that cover, and this photo sat unused. It’s interesting how that happens. One minute it’s mocked up for a cover, the next it’s collecting dust. Another note-worthy thing about this photo is that Ryan is wearing a jaredsouney.com t-shirt. At the time not a lot of photographers had web sites. I made shirts as a bit of a joke and gave them to some friends. It was just a nautical star (a cliché tattoo) and the type underneath it “www.jaredsouney.com.”
The photo above was during Ryan’s crankflip phase. He was doing them in and out of everything. He might be trying to forget that, but here’s one anyway. We shot this while filming for one of the Ride videos, and I think we were also trying to compile photos for an interview in the magazine. I ended up quiting the mag, so again, the stuff we compiled went unused.
This turndown was shot at the old Encinitas YMCA. The dirt jumps set just up the hill from the I-5 freeway in Encinitas. We shot this on one of the days we were out shooting stuff for Gary Young’s Dig Magazine interview, and one of the other shots of Ryan from this day was a Kink Bikes ad.
Another turndown, this time from a skatepark in Las Vegas. Ryan, Aaron Nardi, Gary Young and myself took a road trip to a CFB contest in Illinois, and hit a bunch of stops along the way for a Ride UK article. It was 115 degrees in Vegas that day, and the park was as slippery as ice. A bermslider shot from this angle ended up getting used as a Kink Ad and some other shots were in Ride UK.
Another dirt shot from somewhere in San Diego.
This one has a funny story. Ryan was living with Jimmy Buchans at the time this was shot. It was a couple weeks prior to the tail tap heard round the world. If you are unfamiliar, Jimmy spent approximately 10 minutes (or an entire jam session) at a T1 / FBM contest in Austin, TX trying a tailtap on a 5-foot quarter. For some reason he was trying to air about four feet and land in a tail tap. It confused everyone, and the incident became something of BMX legend. He ultimately disappeared from the scene. It was weird. But back to this photo… Jimmy brought us to this bank to rail to film a fufanu for a Kink video they were filming. I had a video camera on a tripod while shooting photos, and we went through about a tape and a half before he got it done (or roughly an hour and a half). In the process Ryan was messing around and did an abubaca on the rail, first try. I don’t think Jimmy even saw it, and we didn’t use the photo for anything as to not one-up Jimmy.
