“The Rail Gardens on the eastern bench of the Salt Lake Valley has been heavily hit up for years, with Dave Thompson’s Killjoy ender being the most infamous. Trent Steel laced up this perfect rail with a pedal crook on one of the last days of summer.” –Matt Windsor
Posted in BMX, Photo, Weekly Work
Tagged Matt Windsor, Salt Lake Sundays, SLC, Trent Steel
With this video filmed entirely on a cellphone, the bar has not only been raised but it has also been decimated and thrown away. In our defense though, the Nokia phone that this was all filmed with has a 20-megapixel camera and uses optical image stabilization (as does the iPhone 6 Plus, but no other iPhones). And also in our defense, we are talking about Dennis Enarson and Ronnie Napolitan here… I’m sure they could have done most of this in their sleep. With Hadrien Picard behind the keypad, this video proves that the gear doesn’t make a great video- the people using the gear do.
Posted in BMX, Gear, Tech, Video
Tagged Dennis Enarson, Hadrien Picard, Lumia 930, Nokia, Portugal, Ronnie Napolitan
“This abandoned school has showed up in a few different videos over the years, and the various stickers slapped on the broken drinking fountains around the campus leave a paper trail of dudes that have gotten something done on this spot. Brady Tweedy showed up to this spot and dropped an over crank on this rail, which I’m 99.9% certain is an NBD.” –Matthew Windsor
Posted in Photo, Weekly Work
Tagged Brady Tweedy, Matthew Windsor, Salt Lake Sundays, SLC
“This is another classic spot in the SLC suburbs that hasn’t seen much action recently. This part of the bank is super mellow, but it didn’t stop Braden Ross from double pegging the shoulder height pipe attached to the wall just as the sun went down.”
“Salt Lake Sundays”
On a cold, windy day last winter, I was downtown riding a ledge spot by myself, as usual. At the time, I had recently picked up my bike after a five year hiatus and a move across state lines, and I didn’t know a single other rider in SLC. As I was riding this ledge, a crew of about 8 dudes showed up and started sessioning that spot with me. It’s somewhat intimidating to be trying to re-learn basic tricks in front of local shredders as well as a couple dudes you grew up watching in videos, but after introducing myself I just kind of fell in with them. Chills not skills, right? As the weather warmed up, sessions picked up, and I quickly learned not to leave my camera bag at home. Because of the overbearing Mormon influence so prevalent in the state, Utah more or less completely shuts down on Sundays, allowing access to pretty much every spot in the city. Winter is about to hit us like a ton of bricks again, but I’m stoked to be able to share some of my favorite photos from the past year of Sunday cruising.
Cam Wood is pretty well known for doing some wild shit in unexpected places. After a few 180s out of this fountain in front of an old folks’ home, the entire sidewalk looked like it got hit by a tidal wave and the fountain had been almost totally emptied out.
Posted in Photo, Weekly Work
Tagged Cam Wood, Matthew Windsor, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Sundays
I literally just got back from shooting this opposite hanger with Austin and thanks to free gourmet coffee drinks, I am super motivated to post this Framework piece.
We filmed this clip the other day for Flip Clips (volume eight coming soon) and on playback I noticed its potential as a noteworthy photograph. After driving him to a successful job interview, Austin and I jammed to The Fall of Troy while heading back toward ASU campus to ride this fun curved ledge spot.
Here’s the shot without any flashes-
I decided I’d go all-in and use a classic three light setup. My key light (Lumedyne 200w Action Pack) was to the left and in front of the ledge @ f/11. My rim light (Paul C Buff Einstein 640 w/ 11″ reflector) was behind and to the right of the ledge, metered @ f/16. For fill I used a Canon 580EXII set @ 1/4 power to yield f/8, filling in any shadows created by the position of the key and rim.
At first I was thinking I’d shoot 50mm @ f/8 ISO 100 (my go-to these days) but upon further inspection, the 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm became the one. Only after setting up all the lights did I realize that the ambient was giving f/8 @ 1/250- the Arizona sun is much brighter than what I’m used to. In order to cut down on any motion blur that might arise from shooting at f/8, I decided that f/11 would be a better choice. I moved every flash in a little bit and re-metered and somewhat incredibly each one gave a perfect reading.
I gave Austin the nod and he started locking in the opp hanger right off the bat. It took him probably six or seven tries to lace this one (this is the make) from end to end with amazing balance at a low and locked-in speed. We probably should have filmed this one as well, as it was much cleaner than the one we filmed on Sunday, but such is life.
A few on-the-spot corrections: The initial choice of f/8. I should have realized that the sun was beaming (even though we were under shade, the background was super bright) or just have metered in-camera before deciding on that. It only took a couple minutes to move the lights around for more power, but sometimes those couple minutes are the difference between getting the shot and getting the boot. At first, the rim light was casting a shadow of that second post onto the ledge. I moved it a couple feet to camera left and got the shadow to land in front of the ledge. My the fill light was really close to being in-frame and the rim was almost spilling light into the lens but simply moving myself a foot or two to the right and cropping a bit in post solved those issues. And of course, since everything went so incredibly smooth, I realized right after wrapping that I had forgot to switch from JPEG to RAW on my camera, due to shooting a sequence the other night. But knowing that this was going straight to Instagram, I really didn’t care. Life is too good to really care about minimal shit like that. We are both still happy with the results and I hope that you are psyched on this information as well. Thanks for reading, keep shooting!
Posted in BMX, Framework, Gear, Photo, Tech
Tagged Arizona, Austin Aughinbaugh, Canon, Framework, Lumedyne, Paul C. Buff, PocketWizards, Push It A Stop, Tempe
There’s no shortage of ditch spots in Texas and when Chuck told us he was taking us to MegaDitch™, I figured it could make for a good photo and Guts was on board to shoot this wallpaper.
We met up rather late and rode the spot for a minute before starting to setup for the shot as the light was quickly fading. The dark sky made the photo super dramatic and I love the contrast between that and the gum tire.
Wallpapers here:
2880×1800
2048×1536
1920×1080
Guts is a lowkey technophile who knows how to get the most out of the least equipment. He knows all the tips and tricks to squeeze every stop of light out of a Sunpak 555 flash and he knows how they work inside and out. To spread coverage across this huge (huuuuuge) ditch spot, he tripled up the 555’s (thus creating a 1665) and pointed each in a different general direction. It’s nothing short of amazing that he got light from corner to corner in the frame.
Here’s how it all went down-
“Matti called me saying he’d found a carpark for us to try and shoot some pictures, so that evening we went and checked it out with the usual thought of we’d get a couple of pics before security asked us to leave. Just as I was setting up my flashes a security woman walks onto the level, she walks over and asks what we were doing, we explained, instead of asking us to leave she said “oh cool” and watched for a while. As the carpark was empty and dark, I wanted to try capture this and also emphasize how flatlanders are elusive mysterious creatures. My set up for this shot was really simple as I could use the markings on the floor to know when Matti was rolling into the right spot, 2x Canon 430EXII on 1/4 power @ 50mm set either side but slightly infront of Matti as to not light his front up too much, I used my 24-105 lens @ 105mm on my Canon 6D. As I remember we only took a couple of shots of this trick before we got this one which was a result.”
Tom Hibbitt, Nottinghamshire, England.
Nikon D7000
exposure – 1/200th
f-stop – f/5
ISO – 650
focal length – -50mm
flashes 2x Youngnuo yn560ii
sandwiched the rider with left slightly in front and left slightly behind.
right flash 1/1
left flash 1/2
Posted in BMX, Photo, Photo of the Week
Tagged Adam Lievesley, Nikon, Nottinghamshire, Tom Hibbitt, Yongnuo
Dimitri James Barspin, Mesa, Arizona
Push It A Stop 
