Wednesday, October 26

If you check out the web site for NBC's Dew Tour, you'll find an interview with Parker, Zitzer, and myself about our new magazine. Of course you'll also find plenty of info and photos up there from this year's series. The interview with us is part one of a two part interview.

Just returned from the LG Action Sports event in the UK. There's some photos I took over there on the BMX Plus web site, along with some others from the Dew Tour a couple weeks back in Orlando, so that saves me having to post them here. Scroll down the front page, and you'll come across them in their daily updates.

 

Tuesday, October 11

Issue #2 of Sophisticated Rider Magazine showed up as expected last week. Here's the cover I designed using one of my shots of Pro skateboarder Jake Brown. Also, I forgot to post these here when I got them, but here are some samples of one of the limited edition Mountain Dew cans I shot of Chad Kagy.

Heading to Orlando this week for the Dew Action Sports Tour Finals, and then to the UK for the LG Action Sports Championships in Manchester.

 

Wednesday, October 5

Sophisticated Rider issue #2 is printing and should be ready for consumption this Friday, October 7th. I'm being to lazy to put the cover up here, but if you want to get a sneak peak, John put it up on the Sophisticated Rider web site. We should have copies with us at the Dew Tour in Orlando next week.

 

Sunday, September 11

Here's is a shot of Bucky Lasek from Gravity Games vert a couple months back.

 

Friday, September 9

Here's a part year Woodward local Anthony Napolitan, at the MSS comp in Sacramento last weekend. Anthony took a page out of Koji Kraft's book and won practice but crashed hard before prelims which screwed up his groove. That was a 360 turndown, here's a front flip which is only being done by a few people.

Then there's this creature that stopped off today to have its picture taken.

 

Wednesday, September 7

Just returned from a trip to Sacramento. I'll post a few photos from that event later.

Aaron Nardi forwarded me an email consisting of the following information from Square One owner/ BMX dirt jumping icon Kris Bennett:

"Square One rider Mike Szczesny suffered the worst crash of his life last week breaking his back riding at his local trails. Mike overshot a section-to-section transfer, landed flat, and looped out onto his head and back. Mike described the crash as folding his body like a suitcase. "I overshot, landed flat, and my body folded so hard that it broke my back. I folded like a suitcase." Unable to breath, Mike thought that he might have punctured a lung. After a trip to the ER, he learned that he fractured three vertebrae in the middle of his back. Mike's broken back has taken him out of commission, off his bike, and unable to work for months. Please help Mike pay his bills by buying a Square One Cubic Pic t-shirt for $17. The price includes shipping and all proceeds go to Mike. Mike Szczesny has been a part of Square One since day one. Thanks for helping us help a great friend and an amazing rider. For more information visit www.squareonebmx.com."

Everyone needs t-shirts so you might as well buy one that does some good.

 

Wednesday, August 31

I flew over Camp Woodward with Zack Phillips from Kink Bike's at the helm last week in a little four seat plane he pilots for fun. He wanted to throw out some Kink T-shirts, stickers and posters over camp so kids could grab them. We made 5 or 6 very low passes while shoving goodies through a fist-sized window opening. Most of the stuff actually landed relatively close to the target area. Here's a shot of Zack tossing some stuff out the window. If you look closely you can see all the running campers. One thing that's probably not good in a small plane, or any plane is something hanging from the wing in mid flight. The something in this case one of the t-shirts we were throwing out the window. Fortunately it wasn't posing any actual danger to us, at least we hoped not. The thing Zack was worried about was that it would fall on the runway when we landed, possibly causing a problem for another plane. With that in mind he called the tower when we were heading back and said "This is going to sound really wierd, but we have a t-shirt on the tail." All the tower had to say was "Copy the t-shirt on the tail." They didn't really seem all that suprised, so stuff like that must happen all the time. Good to know.

 

Tuesday, August 30

Shot some FMX at Woodward this week with Alistair Whitton, who has been crossing over to the motorcycle a bit lately with the new course at Woodward. As you can tell by the photo he's getting really good quick. We're going to do a cross-over piece on Ali for Sophisticated Rider #2.

Heading off to Sacramento on Sunday for the Mobile Skatepark Series event up there.

 

Saturday, August 13

I was walking through Target today and came across one of my photos on an endcap display (note: I took the attached photo with my cell phone camera, so excuse the quality). It's a shot of Mat Hoffman I took during a shoot for Right Guard and Target a two summers ago. He's doing a no-hander one-footer on a vert ramp, which I would argue is the coolest looking trick on a BMX bike.

 

Friday, August 12

The BMX community lost [another] great one yesterday. Colin Winkelmann was a kick-ass bike rider, and one of the nicest guys on the planet. This was the first photo I could find of Colin here at the moment (photo by Chad Kagy).

 

Sunday, August 7

Another shot from the LG Action Sports World Tour, this one from Barcelona. Park winner Sergio Layos. That's designer Frank Gehry's "Goldfish" below his front wheel. Here's one of Eduardo Terreros as well.

I can't forget this portrait of Mathias Ringstrom I shot before one of the Italian demos he was doing. Blue steel.

 

Saturday, August 6

Here are a couple of random shots. One of Anthony Napolitan and one of Mat Hoffman.

 

Wednesday, August 3

Back from 10 days in Europe for some LG Action sports World Tour events. Here are a few photos from the Italy stop. John Parker, Sandro Dias, the vert ramp with Sandro, and Mat Storm. Check Sophisticated Rider issue 2 (out Oct. 1) for more photos from a few of the World Tour events. Thanks to the ASA crew for a fun trip. Occassional Woodward visitors Sergio Layos and Alex Barbero won the Spain and Italy park events respectively.

It was news to me, but apparently Italy has added extra minutes to the length of an average hour. Judging by this clock, I would gather that an hour now contains 100 minutes. Trendwatchers will probably note that it will take the states a few years to catch on. Either that or the clock was just broken.

 

Tuesday, July 18

Just finished the first issue of a new magazine called "Sophisticated Rider" that I'm working on with John Parker and Paul Zitzer. The second issue will be out in a few months (quarterly), and it focusses on BMX, Skate, and Moto-X.

Heading to Europe for 10-days (Spain and Italy) for some LG Action sports events.

 

Friday, May 27

Spent a week in Oklahoma for Mat Hoffman's Crazy Freakin' Biker's BMX event, and Art Show. I was out there for a bit of extra team shooting photos of the Hoffman team. The contest was at a new skatepark in OKC, which has been named after Mat. The park is all concrete and it is amazing. And yes, bikes are allowed.

Last week I was out in Ohio shooting photos of Adam Banton who was back visiting Cleveland from LA. We ended up going to shoot at a reservoir overflow in Norwalk, Ohio. Apparently jumping a fence with signs all over it saying "Stay Out," "No Tresspassing," etc., is frowned upon in Norwalk, so the four of us got $150 tickets, which they made us pay right away being from out of state. Fortunately I got a few good photos so it wasn't a waste. Here's one of Adam from that spot. It's a good thing they sent four police cars to deal with the situation.

 

Saturday, April 23

Staying busy this month. Did a fashion photo shoot for Co-Ed Magazine last week, and started pulling together some photos for a future portfolio section in Ride Magazine (the UK version).

There's an art show during Mat Hoffman's CFB contest in Oklahoma City coming up on Saturday, May 14th. I'm preparing to ship some stuff out for. I'm spending a week out there at the same time to shoot photos of the Hoffman Bikes team for catalogues and ads.

 

Thursday, March 17

I spent four days in Toronto then straight to Charleston, South Carolina, and then back home for a photoshoot at Woodward.

Flairwhips in practice happen if you're Morgan Wade.That's from the Toronto Metro Jam.

There are a bunch of my photos of the Hoffman team on the Right Guard Extreme web site. They are in the "atheletes" section under the Hoffman Bikes sub-heading.

 

Thursday, February 24

I've got a cover photo on the latest issue of the Canadian magazine FUEL. It's the "Wheels Issue" and features an interview with Jamie Bestwick (he's the cover boy). There should be a portrait of him I shot inside the issue as well, though I haven't seen it yet.

I'm off to Toronto next week for the annual Metro Jam up there. I'm sure it will be nuts as usual.

 

Wednesday, February 23

Recent Painting, Acrylic Silkscreen on canvas. Follow.

Tuesday, February 22

BMX types from all over the world were in town last week for some meetings. Got some good vert photos with everyone in town. Here's one of Dennis McCoy from the weekend. The Condor (Mat Hoffman) was in town as well. He was fresh off a trip to Mexico and his bike had bullshit all over it...literally. Keep an eye on your MTV to find out what that's all about. A few minutes after this photo he had a little run in with the bottom of the ramp, and we didn't shoot anything else. Right now he's probably back flying his paraglider over Oklahoma with a quadruple espresso in hand.

We were having some fun at Woodward the other day and I strapped a camera to Jamie Bestwick. I have a wireless infared transmitter, which allowed me to still take the photo rather than having him have to push a cable release. I just had to be within view of the sensor on the front of the camera, so you can see me in action in this photo. That ramp below that looks really tiny is actually ten feet tall, Jamie is just really high above it. He made sure to do a big one hander so you can see Alistair Whitton carving below him.

Thursday, January 27

Souney photo sighting: Mountain Dew has started releasing its limited edition 15 packs of 14oz. "Sports Series" cans. There will be two seperate cans with images that I shot of Chad Kagy on them. One of the images of Chad is also used on the 15-pack case itself. The cases feature one can design per case and I think they are being released over the course of the year. Right now the case I found had some Nascar cans in it. Chad will be on both diet and regular Mt. Dew, and my photos will also be on the POP etc. (as used on the cans). The cans are promoting this year's Dew Tour, a new action sports series sponsored by Mt. Dew that will be televised nationally on NBC.

These cans/ cases are sold exclusively at Wal-Mart stores nationwide. There will be millions of them, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding them, and as we all know, Wal-Mart is everywhere so you won't have a problem finding that either. As soon as the cans with Chad show up I'll post some photos of them on the site.

Thursday, January 13

A couple of weeks back I was looking through my site statistics, and noticed an odd key phrase search that led someone to find this site. Key Phrases are what you type into a search engine, and for some reason someone found my site with a search of "Alistair Whitton got for Christmas." For whomever is interested, one of the gifts Alistair received was a belt buckle with a small old-school joystick (like an old Atari video game joystick) that says "play me" on it.

Since noticing that odd key phrase, I've been checking more often, and found another good one this week: "sample haircut promotional postcards." Nice.

This is a shot from last year of Bestwick that we never used for anything. It's a turndown flair over a channel of a vert ramp.There were birds living in the deck of the ramp and they were pissed of that I was laying down in the channel. They kept swooping in and getting within inches from my face. It was nuts.

 

Thursday, January 6

Central, PA has been covered in ice the past two days, due to rain, and the cold temperatures. It makes for some cool looking branches on the trees though. Here are a couple of shots from yesterday. One and Two.

 

Tuesday, January 4

Woodward Camp has several large foam pits for action sports folks to learn new tricks into. Over the course of the summer, despite being constantly warned against it, the campers tend to carve things into the foam blocks. It makes things messy in the long run. It makes the foam pits dusty, and deteriorates the blocks. It's one of those things that no matter how many times you yell at them, they still do it, so I started taking photographs of a lot of the different things kids carve. It's sort of an interesting sociology study. A lot of kids carve their names. Second most popular would probably be swear words. That I'm not suprised about. Here's one of the carvings.

Here's a no-footed invert shot of John Parker from a couple weeks ago. After I shot this they put some new lights over the Cloud 9 vert ramp so I'm looking forward to shooting in there.

Another recent work is this mixed-media painting (acrylic, silkscreen, enamel).

 

Sunday, January 2

WheelsandWax.com is a new action sports photography site that just launched. They have a gallery of some of my action sports work on there at the moment. The site will be focusing on some informative content along with a message board about action sports photography. Seems like a good idea to me. With the exception of skateboardphotography.com most of the other photography boards and sites are pretty general with little information for someone that would want to get into action sports photography.

I took this photo the other night out in back of our house when the sky was blazing red/orange over the giant football stadium. There always seem to be crazy sunsets this time of year over Beaver Stadium. It's a bit of a predictable shot, but I didn't have to leave home.

And then there's this banger of Alistair Whitton over Jamie Bestwick. Jamie has a new car that lets him drive it without putting a key in the ignition. It is fancier than my Saturn. Also, this morning I was looking at some of the statistics regarding this web site, and apparently 3 unique visitors found this web site by searching the phrase "Alistair Whitton got for Christmas" in a search engine. I'm not sure what to make of that. If it's that important I can ask him for a list of what he got.

 

Friday, December 24

I've been having some server issues to the point where some of my email was disappearing into nowhere land. If you emailed me something important, and I didn't get back to you this is likely the reason. It should be squared away now, as I switched to a newer, upgraded server. Everything should be as it was. I had to upload a back up of this entire site, so hopefully everything is in good working order. It seems to be.

 

Tuesday, December 21

Got the new State College Magazine with the photo of Bestwick, Kagy and Robinson that I shot on the cover. There's also a story inside with some photos of those guys, mostly from Woodward.

Jamie Bestwick managed to get a hold of the giant Etnies billboard/poster that I shot from their Interbike tradeshow booth. I think he's planning to put it up in his basement bar, and it should take up an entire wall. I saw it for the first time in person today and it's huge.

 

Monday, December 13

The new issue of Anthem Magazine is out (#15), and it's great as usual. There aren't very many magazines produced in the states that I'm psyched on these days, but Anthem is always a good one. Unfortunately it's only quarterly. This issue has a nice limited edition cover by skateboard legend Natas Kaupas, as well as larger print run of a fashion cover.

Kevin Robinson had a christmas party this weekend, and even Elvis was there. Elvis had a bit of a hard time getting his portable CD player to work so he could sing his Elvis-ogram, so he had about 30 people staring at him for about two minues as he fiddled with it. An awkward moment I would imagine, but when you're wearing fake sideburns and a sequin covered jump suit with a cape, you're already living an awkward moment. I can't remember any point in Elvis' career where he had that haircut though.

I shot some eggs in the studio this weekend.

 

Saturday, December 11

I use a Nikon D70 camera body now and then, and although it produces great images and has one of the highest flash sync speeds of any DSLR (I've shot flash with it at 1/1000th using a Quantum Q-flash), it bothers me that there's no verticle grip available for the body. It works fine without it, but I'm used to having the extra bulk there, and I think it's more comfortable to hold. I got around there that by custom making a verticle grip for it, more for ergonomics than mechanical functionality (there is no second shutter release). For me it improves the camera body 100%. I played around with one grip I made for a while, and then made some changes to a more refined shape. I've had a few people ask me where I got it, so here's how it was made.

Got some samples of my new promo postcards in the mail yesterday. There are two, one of which looks good, the other one the printer screwed up the orientation and flopped the photo 90 degrees. They're putting that one back on press and re-running it so hopefully I'll have them both by the end of next week. Fortunately I had them Fed Ex me some press samples, so I caught the problem and they can fix it quickly.

 

Thursday, December 9

New DC Shoe Co. ads out at the moment featuring some photos I shot of Chad Kagy. The January issue of State College Magazine will also have photospread with Chad, Jamie Bestwick, and Kevin Robinson. I've got some new promo cards at the printer this week, so those should be in my hands shortly.

 

Sunday, November 28

I found this photo in a toolbox today. Yes, a toolbox. I'm not sure why it was there, but I'm guessing it must have fallen out of something in my garage when I moved, and in a scramble I put it in the toolbox.

 

Tuesday, November 23

Shot some skateboard stuff a week or so ago with Pro vert skater Mike Frazier . Mike was in town to film a couple tricks on the outdoor vert ramp at Woodward for an upcoming Santa Cruz Skateboard's video. We managed to squeeze in a few photos too. Just finished up (or almost finished anyway) Kerry Bestwick's Yoga/Pilates web site pureyogapilates.com this week.

 

Monday, November 17

The last issue of BMX Plus! has a bunch of photos I shot of Koji Kraft in it. It's the one with Morgan Wade on the cover. Coincidentally there is a photo in the same issue that I shot in NYC of John Parker that I like a lot. The coincidence part is that John just moved here to State College on Friday of last week from Arizona. Because of this ESPN is renaming the X Games next year to "State College BMX Demo." It's getting to the point where it really might actually make sense for us to be chartering a plane when we all have to travel to an event.

I've also got some stuff in the newest Zoo York and Hoffman Bikes catalogues.

Monday, October 25

I think this is a John Povah photo, but it's from the Etnies web site of their Interbike tradeshow booth this year. The giant larger than life photo of Bestwick taking up the entire back wall of the booth is a shot I took for Jamie's autograph poster for Etnies. It's almost a billboard.

 

Monday, October 20

A few months back I did a photo shoot with the Hoffman Bikes team for Target and Right Guard. Some of that stuff is in the new Hoffman Bikes catalogues and advertising, but it just materialized in Target on some Right Guard promo end caps. There are some hologram cards featuring Kevin Robinson, Mat Hoffman, Bruce Crisman, and Ryan Barrett. There may be more stuff up and around there, but that's the stuff I saw. Apparently it's been up for a month or so, but the State College store just put there's up. Here's one of Mat Hoffman that was also posted below. In real life it's a hologram. Pretty wild looking. Also just finished designing a logo for the new Woodward Spa.

 

Monday, October 11

I'm working on a few logo design and web projects at the moment. Keep an eye out for Chad Kagy in the October issue of STUFF Magazine. There's a very small photo I shot of him in the "Gearotica" section where they profile some "celebrities" and their gadgets. Chad may or may not be a real celebrity, but since I had to let his dogs out the other day, I'm going to use the word in quotes. I'm also shooting Chad, Jamie Bestwick, and Kevin Robinson for an upcoming feature in State College Magazine. Since they get as much if not more national TV coverage as Joe Paterno, I figure they should get some local media coverage as well. They will be in the upcoming "Men's" issue.

 

Thursday, September 30

The last week and a half I've been shooting photos of Chad Kagy on and off. I guess his sponsors are psyched that he could break his neck exactly a year ago, take five months off after surgery, and then come back to get second place at Gravity Games in vert. Not half bad for a guy held together by some assorted nuts and bolts. We had to shoot an Oakley ad, which involved a bit of a stealth mission. Fortunately tennis isn't that popular anymore so we had no problems, and got the photo. We also shot some stuff at Woodward which will hopefully wind up on some special addition packaging for a global beverage giant. Still waiting to hear back on the details of that one, but it will be on the shelves for 2005 if that goes through.

Friday, September 17

I got back the other day from California – the LG Action Sports Championships were going on. It was a good time, aside from a whole lot of riders getting hurt. Ironically after eating chinese food in the airport I got a fortune cookie that said "you will soon be sitting on top of the world." That seems to be stating the obvious for those of us who go to airports to get on planes.

Since I'm entirely fed up with the screening process at airports I decided to make them hand inspect my film. Typically nothing will happen to slow speed films, but one of the guys was a bit pissy, so I decided to retaliate.These days they open up and swab each roll for testing in their little machine if you have your film hand inspected. The guy was a bit pissed when he opened up the bag and saw I had about 40 rolls of film in there. I had time to kill so I just stood there giggling at him the entire time. Some might say that by wasting his time I took away from the inspection process and someone more dangerous could have slipped through the cracks. I don't buy that. In fact, the airport security screening process is one of the most random things I've ever experienced. Each airport is completely different. My belt sets off the alarm in State College, but that's it. Every other airport I'm fine. Every time my camera bag passes through the machine they (the screeners) get very confused by the large metal box with wires and nobs in my bag. They pull it out and ask what it is. I always just say "a battery" which is, in fact, exactly what it is. What makes me nervous is they just take my word for it, put it back in the bag, and send me on my way. They never seem to ask "what's it for" or anything to probe a bit more. I was told by one of the screeners that they have to ask because the machine can't see through the metal case. Well, if that is true, shouldn't there be more to the process than just taking my word for what it is?

 

Tuesday, August 31

This morning one of the first encounters I had was with a warning label. Warning labels are nothing new in our society, but I found it a bit ridiculous that a warning needed to take up 1/4th the area of a package of four rolls of toilet paper. Warnings appeared in both Spanish and English, taking up an enormous amount of space. I always went on the assumption that toilet paper was relatively harmless, however, apparently in its packaged state it poses a huge suffication risk, or at least enough of a risk to warrant taking up an entire side of the packaging. I realize that we (at least Americans) live in a lawsuit happy society, and unfortunately thes warnings have become necessary to save corporations – toilet paper manufacturers even – from liability issues. Ironically the coffee I'm now drinking also bears a warning – Caution: Contents Hot. No shit, I didn't order an iced-coffee. If the guy behind the coffee counter were to sneak up behind me and pour a freshly brewed pot over my head, that's one thing, but if I spill the coffee on myself while driving, switching tracks on my ipod, and talking on my cell phone... damn isn't that their fault too?

Instead I propose we offer a more generic warning for citizens of this country. Perhaps it should be printed on our birth certificates, but not my toilet paper packaging...

WARNING: The act of living is inherently dangerous! Injury, disease, and even death are eminent. You may lower your risk by living out the rest of your life in a bubble, however if used improperly bubbles and their plastic substrate may cause suffication, and if ingested may cause choking.

Tuesday, August 24

Here are some samples Target emailed over from some packaging they're doing with my photos as a promo with Right Guard. I don't know much else, other than the stuff is supposed to be in Target stores the 9th of September. I think there might be an end cap with a photo on it as well. Mat Hoffman and Ryan Barrett. In adition there is also packaging featuring Kevin Robinson and Bruce Crisman.

Monday, August 16

Wow, two days of updates in a row.
I got some copies of the new BMX Plus! today with my cover photo. It's Alistair Whitton at the trails in State College, PA.

Sunday, August 15