Category Archives: Tech

Photo of the Week: Marcelo Rios

Posted on February 11, 2013 by | Leave a comment

For this week’s photo, I decided to take it back to the basics- no fancy lenses, no external lighting, just a great composition and a timeless trick. The colors and the symmetry is what really does it for me.

“This is a photo I shot of my brother Dan at Imigrantes park. He was practicing this tabletop so he asked to me to take a picture. Well I took this picture about 5:18pm. It has been a lovely day with good light and beautiful sky! I tried to show everything ramps momentum sky the tabletop. I wanted to show the tabletop on top of the grid. The picture was shot with a Canon 60D with a 50mm. Shutter speed was 1/250th and the aperture was F14 with no flashes.”

Check out more from Marcelo on Flickr, and join the Push It A Stop group to be next week’s photo.

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Photo of the Week: Derek Riggs

Posted on February 5, 2013 by | Leave a comment

This photograph by Derek Riggs hits a few chords for me- at first I was reminded of the square format B&W work of Robert Adams, and with flash, the work of Larry Fink. This photo has a timeless feel to it, at least in my eyes, for those reasons. All varying tones of black and white are present, the composition is clean and the onlooking kids add an element of location and emotion. It’s a pretty stylish invert as well.

“This is a photo I shot of my good friend Joey Calderone, was taken about a good 2 years ago at Chandler bike park out here in AZ. This photo all came together easy, I had just got a Hasselblad 500c and was eager to but it to use and Joey has always been one of my go to guys about shooting anything, mainly cause he’s a dialed as hell rider. Ok so, it all started as just a regular night at the park, then I asked Joey about shooting a lil something, and on this particular hip, from the 8 foot transition to the 6 foot roller hip, he was doing awesome tables. And since I was still getting use to the shutter on the Hasselblad, and it was easy cause he was holding the tables for a split second. Now we got flashes set in place (3) and all the exposures correct, we could fire it out. The kids in the photo we’re just a couple of “Chandler rats” as the kids at the park would say. Normally I’m pretty picky about people being in the back ground, and with this shot I pretty sure I was, I think this looks cool. They look like there thinking like “wow” haha just the expressions on their faces I think make the picture I nice on to look at other than Joey doing another great table. Shot with a Hasselblad 500c, I wanna say Ilford b&w 120 film. Qflash, Nikon sb-28, and a Sunpak 544. All triggered with Pocket Wizard plus II’s. 1/500th @ around 5.6 aperture.”

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Photo of the Week: Davis James

Posted on January 28, 2013 by | 1 comment

I was first struck by the overwhelming blue in this photo, followed by the colored streaks in the middle of the frame, and then the fact that it’s Cam Wood in a roller rink. It’s definitely a fun photograph which translates nicely.

“This image was shot in Salt Lake City, Utah during the filming of S&M’s video, “Salt Lake Shake.”

Early on in the trip, the team was dealt with some crap weather for a couple days so Cam Wood made a call to his Uncle, owner of “fun-plex,” as I will describe it. A short drive up the road and I was unloading my bike and camera-bag out of the van. Complete with waterslides, a roller rink, an American Gladiator tennis ball cannon, and about 10 moon bounces; this place was an amazing photo location.

We rode around for a bit and I noticed a couple of the guys setting up the launch ramp/trashcan in the middle of the rink. My immediate thought was that I wanted to get the blue glow off the rink surface to come through in the shot, and considering the size of the setup, that I would shoot it Fisheye.

I setup 2 strobes: 1 out of frame left, slightly behind me and another out of frame right, just slightly out of the way of Cam’s approach. To get the saturation of the blue glow coming from the black lights I slowed the shutter and panned the camera with the action to freeze the rider. In addition, I adjusted one strobe to point up slightly, and set the other to Zoom. This was to keep from washing out the floor.

Camera: Nikon D300s, 10.5mm
Settings: 1/15 @ f/5, ISO 320

Strobes: 1 SB800 left @ 1/8 power- 8 ft away from subject
1 Sunpak 555 right @ 1/4 power- 14 ft from subject”

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Post-Production via Adobe Lightroom

Posted on January 28, 2013 by | Leave a comment

In my opinion, this is the best episode of in focus thus far. Click play for a few Adobe Lightroom post-production techniques from Skateboard photographer Jonathan Mehring.

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Posted in BMX, Photo, Skateboarding, Tech

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Photo of the Week: Phil Miklovich

Posted on January 7, 2013 by | Leave a comment

I was drawn to the strong vertical lines in the photograph, and the colors are very pleasing to me. TJ’s red hat really makes him pop out of the image. The lighting is good and the action is sharp.

“Rolling around New Haven, Connecticut with the shredder Tj Bank, we found this dope wheelchair ramp rail-hop. This was the last photo I ever shot with my Nikon D3100 along with the Nikkor 55-300. The settings were 1/200s, F5.6, ISO 400, and shot @70mm. I used two Vivitar 285HV’s infront and behind the ramp @ 1/1 power triggered by cactus v4’s. While shooting this, we had a huge crowd of random people standing behind me mad sketchy playing 20 questions about what’s going on. Once Tj did the railhop, they started to spazz out which made me super stoked.”

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Craig Passero Desktop Wallpaper and Digital Walkthrough

craig hanger wallpaper header

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Posted on January 6, 2013 by in BMX, Gear, Photo, Tech

Photo of the Week: Levi Marshall

Posted on December 25, 2012 by | 1 comment

This week’s photo is of Steven Hamilton in Columbus, Ohio, shot by Levi Marshall. What attracted me to it initially were the colors- his grips, shirt and pedals matching the surrounding sky pretty nicely. The composition is strong and the framing in front of the building is spot-on. The lighting is deep but not overly dramatic. It is an undeniably action-packed shot with an amazingly precise exposure.

“I shot this photo late last spring in downtown Columbus, Ohio. It was my first time shooting with Hamilton. He loves fisheye and doesn’t like shadows on his face in riding shots. So I put the flash in front of him up really high on a light stand and squatted pretty low in a bush for my angle. In post, I warmed up the photo a little since it was super overcast. I also cloned out a couple spots of flash flare since I was using a cheap fisheye.

Canon EOS 7D, Rokinon 8mm fisheye, Vivitar 285HV main flash at 1/4 power, Vivitar 285HV for the kicker light 1/2 power, Paul C. Buff Cybersyncs. Camera settings: 1/250th at around f/8 iso 250.”

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Clothing Photography Walkthrough

Posted on December 21, 2012 by | 1 comment

Hopefully this helps you shoot some of your own.

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Posted in Gear, Photo, Tech

Photo of the Week: Pete Brandt by Kyle Emery-Peck

Posted on December 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This week’s photo is shot by San Francisco’s Kyle Emery-Peck.

“I had a bmx photo that I wanted to shoot with Pete where I framed him at the bottom of my composition. I get in the habit of composing riders in the top of my composition so I wanted to change it up. My friend Terry reminded me of this location in Chinatown. It was later in the day, so the sun was getting lower in the sky. It just so happened that I was shooting toward the East, so it made for great ambient light. I set up two Sunpak 555’s at 1/2 power one on the left and one on the right. I shot with Fuji Provia 100F on my Hasselblad 500c with an 80mm 2.8 I think the exposure came out to 1/500 @ f/5.6. From there I just gave Pete a target to aim, and let the Pete Brandt machine go to work. I was happy after 3 or 4 attempts. Pete is by far the most dialed flatlander to shoot. He lands the most technical tricks so consitsently that I feel good about shooting film.”

Add your photos to the Flickr photo pool for a good time, and a chance to be next week’s photo.

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Posted in Art, BMX, Gear, Photo, Tech

A Short History Of The GIF

Posted on December 5, 2012 by | 2 comments

And my favorite GIF, featuring Mike Mastroni-
mike

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Posted in Art, Photo, Tech