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.

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.

The good people at Odyssey/G-Sport hooked up some “Plegs,” their plastic pegs which are pool coping safe and skatepark friendly for riders at the jam to use. Awesome! Good fun and no coping bashing. Dean put together a few small contests for high air and best trick, but overall it was just a good, fun session with some amazing riding. Some names you might recognize came out to shred: Justin Inman, Ryan Sher, Nick Hamilton, Jake Honesto, Snotty, Shad Johnson, and more. John Ivers was flowing the bowl unbelievably well all day long and had the fastest and best lines in the slick pool. Shawn McIntosh was blasting the bowl and actually won the high air contest. The highlight of the day was John Bristol’s 540 several feet out of the bowl. 90s Bristol was in effect.

I also posted this gallery with my friends at BFD.com. You can check out a ton of videos from the Action Sports World Tour over there. Check out the gallery at BFD.com or check it out below.

All photographs © Jared Souney 2009

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).

Here are a few of Ryan Sher, from the same Kink “Destroyer Tour” trip in 2000 as the Dave Young photos I posted the other day. Ryan was referred to as “Kickflip” on most of this trip, since at the time he was really into crankflip tricks. Somewhere along the trip he picked up the Misfits dolls, which we used as a prop in a similar photo which ran in the Ride Magazine story. I think the one we used was an icepick on a sub-box (I don’t have the issue in front of me to confirm that).

These days Ryan is the man behind Subrosa and, like me, lives in Portland. You can check out a more recent shot of Ryan after the jump.