The plan today was to hit up the Tigard skatepark with Verde Bikes rider and Colorado native Roman Tencza. He’s been hitting up Tigard for daily sessions and charging hard. A lot of the Northwest riders are trails or street riders, which I like, but I prefer shooting transition stuff if I had the choice. Roman kills the transitions.

Despite some nice weather up here in Portland lately, it’s still iffy until late June. So a day that started out sunny quickly saw ominous clouds rolling in. Looking North, we figured we could still see sun in the sky, and hoped to beat the rain over the bridge to the Vancouver, Washington skatepark; Just barely. As soon as I got there (Roman beat me by a few minutes so at least he had a chance to roll around) and I stepped out of the car we could feel it starting to rain. I pulled out one light as quick as I could, barely had time to focus, and it was coming down. Roman got two quick hits at this turndown transfer into the extension before it started dumping down. About three minutes at the skatepark and we headed to lunch. Somehow we still managed to squeak out a cool shot. Button pushed and straight to pack up the gear before it turned into camera bag soup. Tomorrow we’re hoping the weather holds and we can get some actual time in.

I like the single flash result here, as if you look closely the hubs are sharp and as it moves out the wheel you get some motion blur from the fast spinning wheels. Lends a bit of movement while still stopping the main action. For the tech geeks: There’s one Elinchrome Ranger RS AX pack/head on the right side across the bowl at full power. I started unpacking a second light, but it was about to dump so it sat unused.