I shot a bunch of photos of Roman Tencza last month (and over the course of the last year really) that turned out to be some of my favorite things I’ve shot recently. Those shots evolved into a bio for the ESPN site, which evolved into a video to go with it. This feature is a good example of why I like producing content for the internet: I can melt together all the aspects of content that I like into one piece (photo, video, etc). Roman shreds the skateparks up here in the Northwest. Don’t be surprised if you see him on the contest scene this year too. He’s got the big tricks, but the style and flow to go with it. Very Rob Darden, Brian Foster, and Brian Hunt inspired style. Awesome. Check out the video above, and click here to go through the photo gallery and interview. It’s worth it.

I did a quick little edit of Quincy Dean on my recent trip to Woodward West. You can read the story here and watch the video. I had planned to shoot something a bit more in depth, but he hurt his foot pretty badly when he took a quick break from filming to ride the high jump with the campers. The high jump takes people out.

There are also a few of my photos in the John Bristol feature (Bristol is shown above) on ESPN as well, which also went up on Friday.

I went out to NYC a few weeks back to meet with Brian Tunney and the rest of the ESPN Action Sports staff about doing some BMX content for them. I’ve been notoriously critical of television produced BMX/Skate events like X Games, but I think from a online content perspective ESPN have done a great job putting together original content, and hiring the right people to do it. The first feature I did was an extended version of an earlier post I did on here about the legendary Boston BMX and Skate spot known as Turtles. When I originally wrote the post on here I hadn’t found my old photos from the final session, the day before they bulldozed the place. After digging through some filing cabinets I found a folder of old New England stuff, and there it all was. So check out ESPN for that.

I also have a photo of the day on the Freestyle Motocross blog over there on ESPN.

The October 5 issue of ESPN the Magazine has some of my work in it. The subscriber copies contain the EXPN supplement (not available on newsstands) which features two of my shots as shown above (Dean Dickinson as a two-pager). You can see the photo of Dean in my original post from the day after the shoot here as well. That’s one of my favorite photos I’ve shot in a while, so I’m glad it’s getting around. The other photo is of Chet Blacksmith, on the green rails on Burnside in Portland. Thanks to Brian Tunney for sending these out.

It’s been a few years since I’ve braved the X. I gave up going largely based on the reasons above, though mostly for the Credential nightmare that always ensues. No type of credential is ever good enough to get you where you want to go. Athletes have trouble getting credentials for wifes and kids, never mind friends and family, and the media… forget about it.

This was my first year with a media credential. In the past I’ve had “higher level” credentials, but this year. I didn’t really plan ahead. I was not prepared for how little access a Media credential gets you, but once you’re inside the gate… well that’s about all it gets you.

Really I should have known, and it’s my own fault for not ensuring a proper credential to get things done. But now I remember why the endemic media stays away — it’s simply not worth it.

Fortunately I did not make the trip X-clusively for the X Games. If I hadn’t had to be in LA last week anyway, I wouldn’t have bothered. We all make mistakes.

So far my favorite photo that I’ve seen from the games is one that appears on Chris Nieratko’s blog on the X Games site. Scroll down to the photo of the camera man that received a “shark bite” care of Bucky. Apparently that guy had better credentials than I…