Holy shit. This is fucking awesome. The only question that my friends and I have collectively right now is “what the fuck won first place?” The story is funny, the shots (with a smartphone, I might add… Props to Peter Adam) are stunning, the soundtrack is upbeat and inspiring, and the riding- well, it’s Alex D. You want a great weekend? Watch this every morning. HAPPY FRIDAY PEOPLE!
Monthly Archives: June 2013
Photo of the Week: Josh McElwee
“I shot this photo of Evan Smedley at Grindlab Skatepark in Camp Hill, PA on a late night in January of this year. Evan is the BMX manager at the park and has the entire place way too dialed. On this night, I noticed that he was getting a lot done on this pocket bowl corner setup. My first instinct was to shoot fisheye from the deck, but I decided against that in order to show the steepness of the transition and the thickness of the pool coping. We shot a handful of other tricks, but as soon as Evan did a toboggan I knew that it was going to look better than anything else we had previously shot.
I shot this with a Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/4, Pocket Wizard Plus IIs, a Paul Buff Einstein strobe, and an Alien Bee 800. The lights came from the left and right, and were pointed at each other. The Einstein is at camera right, just out of frame, and feathered to the left a bit in order to keep Evan evenly lit. The Alien Bee is coming from camera left about 25 feet from the bowl corner, and is powered about a stop down from the main light.”
Check out more of Josh’s work here.
Add your images to the Flickr group for a chance to be next week’s photo.
Posted in Art, BMX, Gear, Photo, Tech
Tagged Alien Bees, Canon, Evan Smedley, Josh McElwee, Paul C. Buff
Timelapse Extracts – City of Rats
“London’s Skate Rats in Timlapse form.
Short film featuring the timelapses shot during the making of City of Rats, with a few additional clips from the film thrown in for good measure. This was intended for the extras but for some reason or other was never finished in time to make the DVD.
What is City of Rats? its the first feature length film from Slam City Skates, Europe’s oldest skateshop established in 1986.
“At a point in time where a large section of skateboarders consider social networking props to constitute skateboard culture, it is extremely refreshing to see members of the younger generation still out pounding the streets like those who came before them. Don’t be one of those bellends who only watches skate videos after they’ve been cut up into bite-sized sections on some Facebook hero’s page: support real skateboard culture with your money, not just your ‘liking’ finger. City of Rats is more than worth the measly tenner they’re asking for it. Goon support should be mandatory.” – BEN POWELL, SIDEWALK MAGAZINE
Running at 57 minutes, City of Rats has 14 sections and features the entire Slam Team alongside the shop staff, London locals and vargrants.
Support independent skateboarding, buy now at slamcity.com/accessories-2/skate-dvds.html“
Posted in BMX, Skateboarding, Video
Shawn Mcintosh Desktop Wallpaper
Get it here, courtesy of The Albion, shot by George Marshall.
“Manual” Trails Photo Book
“For over a year we have been compiling a collection of photographs that sums up a trails riders’ common philosophy. “Manual” is a photography book telling stories about good guys who grew up together (or not) around a passion : digging jumps, going fast and flying high with their bikes. Even if sometimes they don’t know each other, all the contributors have put all their efforts to catch rare moments and share incredible photographs of their good times in the woods. After compiling these materials, we have mixed the photos our way and have tried to extract the essence of what trails means to us all. Surprises garanteed, even for the contributors!
As decided originally, this is a non-profit project. And as you may know, printing a nice book costs a lot of money. However, we decided to do it without sponsors and without any advertising, to maintain our independence. All of this to create a book exactly how we wanted it: 100% home-made, thanks to the talents of the international trails community.
We are about to launch a pre-sale of the book on www.banosdistro.com and we have put deadlines for the orders to launch the printing at the end of june (so we’ll print as much as ordered): PRE-SALE FROM JUNE 10th TO JUNE 30th.”
Photo of the Week: Attila Szabó
First off, this is quite possibly the best lighting we’ve seen from any Photo of the Week, ever. The composition is impeccable- tell me you can’t see “RideBMX” or “DIG” at the top there. The colors are pleasing and the red bike sticks out nicely. The rider is framed inside of that fence back there and all of the vertical lines are pretty much straight. There is nothing questionable about this photograph- it is so good.
“Me and Attila “X” Godi lives in the different place of my home country (Hungary). One day we decided to go to Budapest to take some pictures. Here are the best spots in the country so far. A few weeks before he looked out that rail. So we went to there to check it. Actually it was a very easy spot. No pedestrians, no security guards, no traffic on the road. I set up the lights, found easily a good place to the photo. He tried it a few times and then he hit it perfect. I really like where this all goes smoothly, there is no any disruption. I used three flashes. One-one booth side, it were two Metz 60 CT-4. The third Metz 45 CT-4 was up on the stairs behind him. I was shooting with a Canon 5D MK II + Sigma 70-200 2.8 lens. Settings were as follow : 146mm f/5.0 ISO 160 1/200 ”
More of Attila’s work can be seen here and here.
Add your images to the Flickr group for a chance to be next week’s photo.
Video Review: TeamSAF “Searching Acronyms Forever”
Plus there’s an extra section in the DVD that is just as entertaining as the video itself, with some riding that somehow didn’t make the cut. It’s clear that they worked on this video for a long while and had a hard time narrowing down the best clips. Any DVD extras usually give an insight into the team as a whole, with B-roll and outtakes, and this is no exception. Humor and crashes in equal proportions. DVD’s are available for purchase from the filmer/editor Nic Gironda ($10 domestic, shipped) by emailing him at nic.gironda@gmail.com.
The video opens with Chris Carter and his signature “hit everything” style, banging his pegs on all surfaces grind-able (some un-grind-able) hopping into tree stumps and nearly-vertical walls. His bike is in shambles the whole section but he wouldn’t have it any other way. The song selection is perfect for the riding- some sort of Fantasia piccolo, xylophone and string quartet ensemble that plucks with every bump and polejam. His rap outro segues into Marc “Stretch” Meeuwwissen‘s part, filled with incredible balancing acts on rails and in hang-5’s. Dude is like 6’ 1000″ and uses it to his advantage to hop astronomical heights and distances. He can spin like a madman as well. His last clip is simply crazy.
Casio spits a quick sermon about the existential uses of cellar doors and clocks a few new-aged old-school clips of his own.
Pat Quinn, a true grind-god, scrapes every part of his bike on unwaxed surfaces throughout the greater New York area. His part follows a loose formula of “spin-grind-spin” or “grind-spin-grind”. The second to last clip- an overcrook 180 out over an L- is astounding. Dude might look like he’s flailing around on some grinds, but he has precision when he needs it. His ender is an NBD, I’m almost positive.
Jason Byoun- the one skate part- is sort of an interlude with a mellow jazz bebop track, where he pretty much uses his skateboard the same way the team uses their bikes- wallrides between cellars, polejams and big hops. He even has a few riding clips. It seems he fears very little and has no trouble adapting to extracurricular activities.
Jeremy Anderegg, a North Carolina resident, may not look the part of SAF, but takes to the streets with the fury of an NBL pro getting amped for his next heat. His gap-to-wallrides are impressive to say the least. It’s funny to see his brakes come off halfway through the section. He is clearly 100% in control of his bike throughout his part. His last clips are some of the greatest in the video.
Next up are a couple mix sections, which include some Ben Hittle clips for good measure. Riders throughout the Tri-State area and beyond are featured in a few hip-hop montages. The street riding comes in waves between intermittent mini-ramp sessions. Still, grinds prevail and cellar doors are implemented in ways the original designer could never have foreseen.
Evan Gallagher has a shorter part featuring some truly dirty and technical grinds to a folksy-buddist rendition of the Beatles on acid. I don’t even know how to describe one the grinds in his part- whatever the horizontal equivalent of a 60/40 feeble is…
Eric “Ewip” Whitescarver comes flying in from camera-left with amazing feats of wallrides and crankarm usage. There are a few spots in his part that have been absolutely killed in the past decade, but he still finds a way to produce an original clip. The Hoder guest clips complement the section perfectly. Ewip can ride transitions of any varying degree, click tables past flat and hop on any bike with pegs and still keep up with the pack. Two of his last three clips were filmed the day before the video premiered, showing a great dedication and tenacity that can be appreciated by any entity making a video. I can almost guarantee that Ewip will be a household name by 2015.
I’m sure it was a tough choice between Ewip and Eric “Rosie” Schalles having last part, but Rosie ties the whole video together with a style that mixes Carter’s jib-ness with Ewip’s fearlessness. His section can most accurately be described by the namesake “Street As Fuck”. My favorite part of Rosie’s riding is that he will always get the halfcab off a curb if it is in viable distance. This section is filled with some of the steepest handrails to be found in New York and New Jersey- kinked, curved, 60/40- it’s all-inclusive. Technically he has a three-song section and not one part is less-than-par with the whole video. Truly an amazing section to close out a spectacular video.
You won’t find any progressive filming techniques or fancy editing styles in here. Besides a little bit of slow motion and basic graphics, it’s a pretty straightforward DVD- filmed mostly with a fisheye and published using iMovie. Again, DVD’s are available ($10 shipped in U.S.) from Nic by emailing him at nic.gironda@gmail.com. “Searching Acronyms Forever” will make a perfect addition to your collection and should easily earn a spot on the top shelf next to the LFS video…
Photo of the Week: Alex Herzog
What I like most about this photograph is the composition. There are a lot of geometric shapes and lines, from the brick bank he’s riding on to the windows and the slats in the wall. Then you have the rider disconnected from all of that, in the clear blue sky. It’s kind of metaphorical for the freedom BMX brings sometimes.
“Every photographer understands the sheer joy that comes out of the perfect pop-click-smack sound sequence that comes with shooting a bmx or skate photo. This photo of Terrence Webber absolutely roasting this Euro table at our local skatepark here in Foster City, CA is a prime example. There are tons of skateparks in the Bay Area, but this plaza at the local “teen center” as it is called gets sessioned pretty regularly. The plaza has a few fun jibby ledges but I’ve never been fond of this quarter. It’s awkwardly shaped, with a tight transition on the bottom with basically a bank to finish off the top half. Virtually every trick that can be done on this quarter, has been done. But seeing as there isn’t another tranny for miles around, Terrence chose this oddly shaped one to get what will be his last ever bmx photo. Literally as I was writing this, I saw on his facebook that he just sold his bike and will be moving on to other things. So good luck bud!
Photo Info – 1/200 s Exposure
– Brand X speedlite on the ground to the bottom right of the frame set at a 24mm zoom and 1/2 power
-Old Sunpak speedlite on a lightstand to the upper left of the frame, set at full power”
More of Alex’s work can be seen here.
Add your images to the Flickr group for a chance to be next week’s photo.
Push It A Stop 