Eric Mesta is arguably the king of rail feebles. Don’t believe me? Hit play. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of riding with him, you know that he’s always keeping the energy up at any spot and is always going in. He’s no stranger to crashing either. Smart move by The Daily Grind. Feeble Life!
Category Archives: BMX
Photo of the Week: Josh McElwee
Not much to say about this photo- just that it will be the best Photo of the Week ever posted.
“This was shot on an unseasonably warm, rainy December day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I was out shooting with Josh Stair, Evan Smedley, and Cody ‘Mclovin’ Neiswender when we rolled up to this rail. Josh fired out this switch tooth-hanger in one go.
Three lights were used in the making of this photo. The main light was an Einstein at camera right, about 8 feet up and aimed at the left side of Josh’s face, in order to cast a slight shadow on the side of his face most visible to the camera. This light was also feathered very far to the left in order to keep the light away from the building in the background. The rim light was an AB800 and came from camera left about 40 feet back. The large distance from the light to the subject causes the light to fall over a larger area, and gives me some detail in the trees on the right side of the frame. The final light was a Vivitar 285 on the ground, hidden behind the holiday greens on the bottom of the rail. This was just used as a general backlight and assisted in further separating him from the background.
Camera info:
Canon 5D MK II
70-200 f/4
1/200 at f/4.5, ISO 100”
Check out more of Josh’s work here.
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Posted in Art, BMX, Gear, Photo, Tech
Tagged Josh McElwee, Josh Stair, Photo of the Week
AveBMX 2013 Highlights Video
Who doesn’t love a good highlight reel? Do you really need to watch the whole game when SportsCenter will sum it up and show only the key plays and best moments in less than a minute? The AveBMX kids are always doing things, but here are some of their favorites from this year. Filmed and edited by Mateusz Kanownik
“As the year 2013 is slowly coming to an end, we’ve decided to create a little flick that would briefly summarize the best projects, highlights and clips of the year.
On this occasion, we would like to express our immense gratitude to all the riders, partners, sponsors and friends who contributed to the development of the BMX community.
We wish you even more amazing BMX-related moments in the year of 2014!“
Sam Jones at Dayville Skatepark
I’m super psyched on the peg usage in this edit, but mostly on the way it’s filmed. Props to Josh Foisey (also good looks on the soundtrack). A tip (doesn’t really apply here, but this reminded me)- if you are filming a buddy fisheye and he doesn’t ride very fast, the closer the camera is to the ground, the faster it will look like he’s moving. Try it. Science rules!
“On ‘Track’ with Johnny Zammit” by George Marshall
“On the small island of Malta exists a huge and very inspiring BMX community. For the past 25 years, one devoted man has built a thriving BMX scene with little more than his bare hands. With trails, a racetrack and a skate park the ‘Track’ as the locals call it, is the life’s work of Johnny Zammit. Sergio Layos and photographer George Marshall visited the ‘Track’ and spoke to 66 year old Johnny about the rich history of BMX on the island.”
Parano Garage – Introduction Retrospection
If you weren’t watching the Parano Garage team intro edits as they came out over the past couple months, you kinda missed some amazing riding. Luckily, this compilation edit was made and your mistakes have been forgiven. DON’T FUCK THIS UP. HIT PLAY.
Posted in BMX
Tagged Bruno Hoffmann, Carlo Hoffmann, Daniel Tunte, Eddie Baum, Felix Prangenberg, Marc Remmert, Parano Garage, Timm Wiegmann
Desktop Wallpaper: Scotty Wemmer
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We shot this photo in Tulsa, OK in March of this year. The spot is called “Hell Ditch” and it’s rather amazing. I had Damian Racut film me setting up and shooting this so that I could make a walkthrough video. I was kinda drowsy, only getting a few hours of sleep on a hotel floor the previous night so I was not 100% mentally acute. My Canon flash wasn’t firing every time and I didn’t realize that. I’m pretty sure it didn’t fire for the final image but oh well.
Thanks to Scotty for doing numerous euro tables, Damian for filming the walkthrough, Rob DiQuattro for comedic relief and Bobby Simmons for moral support.
As a holiday gift, here’s an outtake shot of Rob airing from the other side that you can also have for wallpaper (unfortunately neither of my flashes on the right fired):
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Here is the making of this photograph:
Hasselblad 500 C/M
80mm T* f/2.8 lens
Kodak Ektar 100 film
2x Lumedyne 200w Action Pack
Vivitar 285HV
Canon 580EXII (did not fire)
5x PocketWizard Plus II’s
Digi- Canon 1DIII, 50mm f/1.4 lens
The final image was scanned on an Imacon Flextight X5 scanner and large format prints were made on an Epson 9880 printer (prints are available for purchase)
Posted in Art, BMX, Gear, Photo, Tech
Tagged Canon, Damian Racut, Hasselblad, Hell Ditch, PocketWizards, Rob Diquattro, Scott Marceau, Scotty Wemmer, Tulsa, Vivitar
Photo of the Week: Alex Herzog
“The only downside to the sport of BMX is that it is inherently illegal. Even if you ride in skateparks, most don’t allow bikes, so you are technically breaking the law by riding there. But it is especially hard for us street riders. This day, Nolan [Santana], Joe and I were pedaling around the sketchier parts of South San Francisco in search for new spots. While cruising down the street, I saw Nolan hit this little wallride and thought it would make a good photo, as the wall framed him quite well with his black t-shirt and jeans. However as I was setting up my camera, the tenant came out and started to yell at us to leave after he heard the ruckus. Nolan and I really wanted this photo so we asked if we could just get one more go, and he said in his most terrifying voice “No, now I’m going inside to get my gun, and when I come out, ya’ll better be gone.” We gave it one more go and got this shot, and proceeded to get as far away from this spot as possible. This photo was shot on a 35mm Nikon FTN with no external flashes. I had the camera set at f5.6 with a shuterspeed of 1/250th. In the darkroom I had the enlarger set on a higher filter of 4.5 to really get that contrast and make Nolan pop off that wall. I also did some burning on the tops of the buildings to seperate them from the blown out foggy sky.”
Check out more of Alex’s work here and follow him here.
Join the Flickr group and add your images to the pool to be next week’s photo.
Posted in Art, BMX, Gear, Photo, Tech
Tagged Alex Herzog, Nikon, Nolan Santana, Photo of the Week
“Glory Hole 2013” by Brian Chu
A short monochrome super 8 film by Brian Chu highlighting a day trip to the Glory Hole with Full Frame Collective.
Push It A Stop 
