The Hazards of Skate Photography

There are quite a few things photographers will do for their shot. The Shot.  Plenty of hazards we'll conveniently forget about.  Anthony approached me about shooting this drop ledge at the far end of Tweedy.  It wasn't a nice spot.  It was too dark to shoot with natural light, had only one or two angles to shoot it from, the landing was 6-7 feet from a wall, a pain to light.  It took 15 minutes to figure out a workable lighting.  I told Anthony, "let's give it a shot". I asked him what trick?  He said top porn.  He then asked where was I going to shoot it from?  My response: "at the bottom, against the wall".  Wait what?  He would land 4 feet out and force a sudden stop a hair's breath from me.  Not only that, my human light stand, Abel, would be right next to me—as Anthony was doing a liu kang off this ledge.  Nothing is more terrifying than 145 pounds of flesh and plastic coming at you and your job is to time the photo, and quickly pull back to avoid being hit while the guy next to you trying to do the same.  It turned out to be an awesome shot under the less than ideal circumstances.

I suppose I value it because I put my camera and myself in harms way.  okay, and Abel's life. ha.  Or maybe because throughout the shoot, there was constant dialogue between skater and photographer about how to shoot, tricks that would work best, lighting, spot selection, and an understood trust.  Trust that you'll make the best of the shoot.  And of course not get kicked in the face.

Camera settings: 1/125, F/4.0, ISO 400.
Lighting: 580ex speedlite positioned camera left, 1/2 power.  sb-25, gridded, being held 8 feet up behind the camera at 1/2 power (I think?).

Sequence shooting

Sequence shots are funny things.  I've never been too keen on them, especially in the post photoshop world where sequences are merged into a single photo with 15-20 shots for a topsoul or something too small for a sequence.

When I think sequence, I think Daily Bread's section of how to do X trick like a pro. There was Louie Zamora doing an alley oop topsoul that I found funny because he never explained how to do it, just that he went up, he manned up, and did it. haha.  Or A couple years later, Brian Shima did a 720 from ramp to gap that Daily Bread described as 'Motorcross' style. I had that thing taped to my wall for ages.  Each shot was side by side, in rows and columns.

These days, sequences are photo-merged into a single photo.  The only recent single image-sequence photo I have liked was of Don Bambrick in a recent One Issue of him doing a line in Texas.

I've stayed away from sequences since I bought my Canon 30D a year and some ago.  But a few weeks ago I was out with Anthony Gallegos, Jeremy Soderberg, Ranier, some of my friends, some of their friends, and Lonnie Gallegos shooting in Lincoln Heights for the new Fade Nation video.  I lucked out and shot some great shots. Some skate, some candids.  Unfortunatley I kept having issues with my Canon 580ex. Ugh. Always that flash! (and now I think one of my pocket wizards is going..)

When it came to the early evening, the last spot was a long staircase that Haffey does disaster Backside Royale. Looks easy, in person it is a BEAST.  Ranier decides he is going to go fakie, gap the 1st short set and gap the main set fakie 540. That's where I thought okay, I need to try sequence shooting because his spins are just too good to pass up.  I pumped up the iso to 1600, set my focusing on AI focus, 1/125 second, and f/3.5 (?).  I already knew it was going to be a black and white shot. What I found out was my camera's buffer is 9 photos when shooting in raw.  That puppy fires! It's unbeliebable how quick it snaps photos.  Anywho, I'm rather happy with the results, which means I'll be trying my hand at sequences again very soon!