This. Is. Awesome. Read more about it here.
Academy Skatepark Promo by Jon Edwards
Title – Welcome to the Academy
Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: Nikkor AF-S 35mm f1.8 DX
1920 x 1080 HD / 16:9 / 24fps
Music: Miracle Fortress – Raw Spectacle
From the album – Was I The Wave
The skatepark at the time of filming was yet to be completed and the deadline for the project was a week before the official launch date, so we had to work around unfinished areas, missing copings, and continued building work. So it was decided to shoot close cropped views of the park to excite the viewer and generate interest to visit the park.
The ceiling lights were a mix bag of fluorescent so we decided a monochrome theme would make the park look more established and classic whilst removing the colour issue. Sports wise we drafted in some locals and really didn’t need anything to groundbreaking, again the emphasis was on the park rather than the riding or skating. The final promo was also very graphically heavy to further establish the brand identity, and drill the new logo and park into the viewers head.
Feedback has been great so far and park is open for business.
www.academyskatepark.co.uk
www.facebook.com/AcademySkatepark
Which has brought us to The Sony Production Awards:
http://productionawards.sony.eu/videos/view/c24a4f86711deb9e89d310d9797e8832/
Posted in BMX, Gear, Tech, Video
Tagged Academy Skatepark, Jon Edwards, Native Studio
Photo of the Week: Agus Glauber
For this week’s photo, I decided to keep it simple and choose a natural light B&W image. My absolute favorite part about the photo is the interest from not only the passerby, but also her dog. They are both so amazed by the most simple physics of BMX. Who knows what the fuck the dog is actually thinking, but I’m sure that woman doesn’t see BMX everyday, and so when a kid on a bike is pedaling pretty fast at nothing in particular, it draws attention from pedestrians. Even a simple hop can brighten someone’s day.
“This picture was taken on a day cruising near Timo’s house, looking for new spots to film/shoot pictures at. This was the second spot we found within the same block, and since it’s a kindergarden, we had to wait just 5 minutes till all the moms and dads take them kids home. Once it was closed, before starting to film, we both thought of taking a simple hop gap picture, to get a cassual and improvised look; since in the end, that was our thing there, just cruising around with nothing premeditated, it was a very natural caption. While riding there, several people got mad at us for riding the kindergarden facilities, saying we were causing structural damages, even when it was clearly noticeable my friend was using nothing but both his air-filled wheels. This picture was the second try, the first one wasn’t as tight as this one, plus I got some distracting group of people in the background. The passerby and her dog add some interest to the picture so I called this one done. This was taken with my simple digital setup, just a D60 and a 50 1.8 prime. The crop was necessary because the building’s balcony on top was full of distracting objects, so was the area at the left of the stairset. Including the passerby and her dog was a must.”
Check out Agus’ Flickr and Tumblr.
Upload your best images to the Flickr group and be next week’s photo.
Making A Photograph – Carl Wilson
“This rail got built about 6 months ago, I always thought it would make a good picture, as it really represents contemporary British estates in our area.
I drive past the rail regularly and have always wanted to see someone go down it, but it’s pretty high (An easy ball sacking type of rail.) I was out with a couple of the Savakas geezers and we stopped by on the way to somewhere else. Louie took a look and seemed up for it. He’s a beast on most things so it all fits together.
As I’m setting up we spot the police down the road so we have to wait till they have gone, but then the police start walking towards us. They walk straight past us to a guy outside his house right next to the rail, he’s fixing up some old dodgy BMX! So weird!
They arrest him and leave us alone whilst a body builder talks to us about Choppers.
Louie does it first try but he is not happy with it so wants to do another. He has another two goes and breaks his stem. We tried to use the stem from another bike but don’t have the tools.
After leaving and getting another stem (a prehistoric unit!), we return to a bunch of chavy girls running around.
Louie got back up there and done it real good and thats the picture you see. He doesn’t ride rails much, this was his second rail, the first done several days earlier.
I shot it on a Nikon d7000 with a 50mm 1.4 lens, Yongnuo yn565ex to the left on the grass bank, then a Metz 45 cl4 right in front of him just out of frame. I shot on ISO 200, 50mm , f/8 and shutter 1/200.”
Photo available as a desktop wallpaper from Savakas.
Tagged Carl Wilson, Louie "Bambi" Mire, Metz, Nikon, Savakas
“A Different Vision: Simple Session 13” by Dmitri Shushuyev
“For a lot of people who are watching and to a lot of riders who participate it is a major event. Last time I’ve been at Simple Session was in 2010, where I focused on filming most of the riding and to be honest thought that that was what I needed and wanted to film. Through recent years I’ve discovered that filming only riding gets boring over time and it does not give me the same satisfaction on completion as it used to before. Therefore this year I’ve decided to take a different path to this event and my newly acquired camera gear allows me to explore more possibilities than before.
I approached it from a different perspective and wanted to catch the beauty of the tricks, the people themselves, their emotions, the moments that the viewers don’t really get to see while sitting at home or sitting at the venue itself. Another aspect was to enjoy myself more and feed from the riders, the atmosphere surrounding and to meet new people. Of course the trickery that was unleashed was no doubt insane, however I got to enjoy it more than I did before, simply because creating something artsy and about the people is so much more rewarding.
I got to talk with Misha Rostomyan who is a very soulful rider and about the transformation of his style of riding as to where it was and where to it’s heading. Be on the lookout for some very interesting way of riding. Since I could not film the finals due to that only those who had STAFF badges could, I got to hang out with the Subrosa team and just goof around.
Also I tried filming skateboarding this year, however due to lack of knowledge and understanding I have unfortunately failed to capture a whole lot of it.
However, due to this and the fact that I could not film the finals I did get to experience my other passion, which is photography. Again my choice/direction was to capture the riders in their own element with both analog and digital cameras. Check the photos here:
ANALOG
– flickr.com/photos/dmitri_shushuyev/sets/72157633106296166/
DIGITAL
– flickr.com/photos/dmitri_shushuyev/sets/72157633053769340/
Follow me on:
FB: facebook.com/DmitriShushuyevMedia
Twitter: @DmitriShushuyev
Instagram: DmitriShushuyev
Vine: DmitriShushuyev
Technical info:
– Canon 7D
– Tokina 11-16 mm f 2.8
– Glidecam HD-2000″
Photo of the Week: Baz Boski
In honor of spring, this week’s photo is warm and colorful. It’s in your face and unavoidable- a classic quarterpipe lookback angle. I think that if the corner of the ramp was not visible on the lower right side, it would not be a successful photo- it would be an obscured, out-of-context newspaper photo. The ramp brings it all together, even if just that tiny bit in the corner.
“It was a long filming day with Piotr Leszczynski in his hometown (a mining town) Bierun, Poland. There is only one small skate park and its simple – the favourite place where Leszczu rides. All the year my fisheye lens stayed in my backpack and I really wanted do some close shots with it. Leszczu is a very good rider, he’s always ready to try one more when the photo was not perfect, I really like his colorfull bike its always looks great in every single shot and its easy to set the light. To do this shot I used the Canon 5d2 with Tokina 10-17 fish, 2x sunpak 555- one on left, second on right and Canon 540ez in hand by my head.”
Check out more of Baz’s work here.
Add your most colorful images to the Flickr group and be featured next week!
“Through the Eyes of Brian Gaberman”
Here’s a short video of my favorite skate photog Brian Gaberman shooting some wet plates of his family. He’s got a rad little darkroom shed and a nice garden. Check out his work… it’s very inspiring.
Talking Shop: Jeff Z and His Website
What made you go with the Tumblr layout?
“I dropped my first site like five years ago and eventually I decided to not renew the fees to keep it up because I felt like it was out-dated—that was about two years ago. Since then I’ve wanted to do a new site, but the thought of editing my images down and figuring out what exactly I wanted to do site wise was daunting so I just put it off. Eventually, Ryan Fudger started his Tumblr and I immediately liked the format. But I was still debating between a traditional website (one with categories like “action”, “portrait”, “lifestyle” or whatever) and a Tumblr for a like a month or two. During that time I talked with Francis Delapena, who I was planning on having build my new site if I took that route. He and I discussed what I wanted and I told him how I was debating between the two and he told me that he could help tweak the HTML in the Tumblr to make it exactly what I was looking for. In the end, I love how with the Tumblr all the images are on one continuous page and I can post a seemingly unlimited amount. Originally I wanted each image to fill the page because I always want the photo to be as big possible, but I quickly realized that with the 234 images that I wanted to post, it would take forever to scroll through, so I opted for three columns instead, with the option to click on the photo to go big. Having three columns was fun because it gave me a chance to pair images in little sets, either by rider, subject, location, etc. The only challenge was that since I was posting images shot with a variety of different format cameras the columns wouldn’t always line up evenly. I figured out a way around that for the most part, but towards the bottom the images don’t line up correctly and a step pattern begins. Although that wasn’t what I wanted, it doesn’t really throw a wrench in things too bad, so I can live with it. Overall, I’m really happy with the look and operation of the site and I will definitely be adding more images to it soon.”
Do you take any measures to not have your work pirated/stolen and played off as someone elses?
“No, I figure that I post hundreds of photos on the Ride site each month, too, and for the most part, brands/people just don’t grab the photos off the site and post them on their team page or embed them into a rider interview or something like that. On the otherhand, having an image reblogged is obviously great—as long as they plug the source. As for having an image played off as someone elses, I’m sure that does happens, but I have never heard of that happening to anyone I know. I just pity the person who would do something that lame.”
Have you ever had a photo stolen online?
“Not that I can recall.”
Would you ever watermark your photos online?
“No, I don’t think it’s worth it. No matter how small, translucent, or sweet looking a watermark might be, I think they look terrible on photos and ruin them for me. I’d rather risk having someone steal an image than make all of my images have some annoying logo on them.”
What kind of sharpening do you do for web images?
“It depends, most of the film scans have previously run in Ride, so they were drum scanned and sharpened, so I just resized those for web. The digital shots were sharpened using the unsharp mask filter in Photoshop, amount 45-65 (depending on the image), radius 1, threshold 0.”
Do you have business cards? Say when people ask if you have a website, what do you tell/give them? (Especially for us with hard-to-pronounce and spell last names, it could be difficult)…
“I don’t have a business card for my personal or freelance work, only a RideBMX business card with all of my magazine contact info. However, it’s funny you should mention the hard to pronounce last name, because that’s how/why I’m usually referred to simply as “Jeff Z.” as opposed to my full name. “Zielinski” just doesn’t roll off the tongue easily and it’s easy to misspell, so I’ve pretty much adopted the abridged version—but whenever I introduce myself to someone I still say my full name. I even went with jeffzphoto as the URL for my last site because it’s short, easy to remember, and you can’t mess it up. But when working on the new one, I decided to go with jeffzielinskiphoto because I figured it’s about time I get my work associated with my full name.”
Do you do any search engine optimization, meta keywords and all that?
“Yes, I tagged all of the photos on my site with a few of the same key words and some more pertinent ones to each specific image.”
Do you have a printed portfolio as well?
“Yes, I share it with two of the most dialed photographers in the game, Keith Mulligan and Ryan Fudger, we call it RideBMX magazine and it’s available nine times a year.”
Thanks for reading. Here’s a treat for sticking around–
Photo of the Week: Dave Raffa
My favorite part of this photo is the ambience- it almost seems like a movie set. The frame is filled completely, with no sky showing. It’s filled without being cramped or cluttered. Those newspaper boxes are nicely color coordinated. The lighting is dialed and the timing is perfect. I would love to see this printed large.
“Jeff and I shot this photo a while back in New Brunswick NJ. Jeff with glasses aka, Jeff Ludwig aka, the Cardlord sometimes rides in between working double shifts as the box factory. This particular day we were session-ing a classic New Bruns spot and I threw out the photo idea. It would make a sick photo if someone could hanger this little bike rack. The run up was short, bumpy, and you have to turn at it. What most would consider Anti-hop city. That didn’t seem to bother Jeff. A few minutes later a trail rolls in. With the train in the background and, the NJ transit logo right in the shot, we had to shoot it. So I set up my gear as Jeff analyzed the run up. Jeff landed it first take. I was happy with mostly everything, with the exception of the small shadow on his rear wheel. Jeff was down for another try. I adjusted my flash angle and we’re good to go. Whelp, anti-hop got the best of Jeff that time. He basically toothed the front of the rail and went OTB. He was cool about it. Jeff is the man. Sorry Jeff! 50mm F4.5 1/400th iso 200 Three Flashes.”
Check out Dave’s website here.
Add your best photos to the Flickr Group and be next week’s photo!
Fat Tony’s Flatland Book
To the best of my knowledge, not many books have been published based solely on BMX (Paradigm Shift by Kay Clauberg is one, Ricky Adam‘s Destroying Everything is based loosely around BMX). When I say published, I mean they are sent to a publishing house and approved by an editor. This does not include the many DIY books produced locally from various scenes. Yesterday Fat Tony announced the release of his flatland book using the online publishing service Blurb. Although it won’t be put up for a Pulitzer or recommended by Oprah, I think it’s a great idea, not just for himself, but for our jeopardized industry. I got ahold of Fat and talked a bit about it.
What inspired the making of this book?
“I had been thinking about making a BMX book for several years actually… At one point it was on my list of lifetime goals to do a book through a big publishing company and have it sold in bookstores around the world. Over the years though, as I was analyzing my intentions and goals more, I reevaluated that one and decided to scale it back. The work versus reward just wasn’t there, and it didn’t interest me as much anymore.
As a photographer trying to make a living through BMX I looked at several options and ways to make a book profitable, and none of them seemed very good. Then I took a step back even further…the real reason I wanted to make a book of BMX photos was just so I could have a dope ass collection of my favorite shots and so I could look back and see who I had the opportunity to shoot with all around the world over the years. So I figured if I made a book for myself the way I wanted it, I didn’t have to make any money from it for it to be worth my time.
That’s why I went with the print to order system through Blurb. I literally printed one book for myself, and that’s all I have…and I don’t plan to order any more for myself or friends or anything. If I don’t sell a single book, I don’t care. My ego may be slightly hurt because no one was interested in my work, but whatever, haha. If I do sell some, I’ll make a few dollars per copy. The main thing is that I have a book I can look back on years from now, and I’m stoked on that!”
What made you choose Blurb?
“I’ve used Blurb in the past and had great results from it. The first book I ever made was from a trip I took to Ecuador a few years ago. I came back with a ton of travel photos that I was psyched on, so I put together a book with them. The following year I went to Africa and made another book, then the year after I did the same from a trip to Southeast Asia. Blurb lets you design a book the way you want, which is awesome… My background in graphic design helps a lot with that. I used Adobe InDesign to lay out the entire thing, then I just have to upload a PDF to the Blurb site.
With that said, if anyone wants to buy any of those other travel books, they are on my Blurb bookstore as well. Or if you just want to look through them, you can preview the entire thing on the Blurb site. I’ve never promoted those or anything because they don’t have anything to do with BMX. They were purely done so I could have some good memories sitting on my coffee table.”
Is flatland your favorite genre to shoot?
“I don’t have a favorite type of riding, and I really don’t have a favorite discipline of BMX to shoot either. On a personal level, these days I ride more skateparks that anything… As far as flatland goes, I feel like it’s the discipline of BMX that gets the least attention, so being a media guy or whatever, I always try to show flatland as much as possible to help it get some of the recognition it deserves.”
Are the photos previously unseen or have they been published?
“All of the riding photos have been published before—either in magazines, on Web sites, or in the annual flatland calendar I put out through Flatland Fuel. Some of the lifestyle and portrait shots haven’t been seen before though. I kind of look at this book as a “best of” type collection, so I wasn’t trying to come out with new work necessarily, and I didn’t shoot anything specifically for the book.”
Do you feel that BMX is lacking more mainstream outlets, such as books and calendars?
“I definitely think that any time BMX is put in front of people it has the potential to help the industry grow. For example, if a kid that had never been exploded to BMX saw a calendar or book at his school’s book fair, a local book store, or a library, he may get that spark to pick up a bike, or look at his bike differently. So yeah, I think more mainstream outlets like that could help the industry grow, for sure. However, I hate seeing mainstream media showing BMX photos that aren’t shot by a BMX rider. You know the kind of photos I’m talking about…a dude coming down from airing a quarterpipe, horribly timed tailwhips, etc. I cringe every time I see those kinds of photos that somehow make their way into mainstream media!”
Do you think it would help BMX as an industry to branch out in those respects?
“I don’t necessarily think the BMX industry needs to branch out into that type of media though… It’s not like a bike company should make it a priority to make a calendar or book and get it into Barnes & Noble. That’s not their business. They should keep doing what they do best, which is making bikes. I do think it’s up to photographers like me to reach out to the mainstream media and help them portray BMX more accurately. That’s something I’ve been working on a lot and will continue to work on.”
Check out Fat’s books here, his website and his blog.
Push It A Stop 