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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from the archives

Posted on January 30, 2013 by | Leave a comment

1 JanuaryNew Jersey – January 2012

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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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“Nick Tingren – 4 Hours” by Rupert Walker

Posted on January 25, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Rupert Walker did an amazing job with the filming and editing of this four hour skatepark session in Coquitlam, BC. The whole foggy ambiance gives a slightly eerie energy that is perfectly counterbalanced by the soundtrack. One or two of the freehand shots are questionable, but the static tripod shots more than make up for it. With peaceful interludes and well-timed cuts, this edit is more for the cinematographer than the rider (no offense to the riding).

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Photo of the Week: Simon Cassol

Posted on January 21, 2013 by | 1 comment


Maxime Bonfil by Simon Cassol

The colors in this photo slapped me in the face at first sight. Almost every hue is represented in the image. It is a very dynamic composition and the action is well-described. It’s a fun photo that touches a special place in my heart for skatepark gaps into grass.

“As many photos, this one wasn’t planned at all. It was just a quiet afternoon, riding and relaxing from last night. During the session, Max had this idea of whipping over a bench next to a bank, I wasn’t into taking photos this day, but he motivated me to try some and he was right ! So that’s about it, you never know when you’re going to shoot something cool !

This spot is a small skatepark, real good to ride, mostly street tech, and it’s near Toulouse in the south west of France. (And I’m assuming this was the last photo I shot in 2012, just for the non-sence fact ahah)

Concerning the specs, this was shot using a Canon 40D with a Tokina 10-17 fisheye.
Settings were 1/250s, F4 and ISO 100.
As for the lights, I used a quantum Q flash on the right (maybe at ¼?) and two vivitar 285HV on the left (both at ½ I guess).”

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Photo of the Week: Sam Adams

Posted on January 14, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Obviously the first thing that attracted me to this photo was Sam’s use of a color temperature filter on his flash, making the rider stick out amazingly. The angle is optimal and the frame contains a good amount of symmetry. It’s sharp and demands the viewers attention. I can vaguely remember seeing this photo on the older skateboard photography message board galleries, and it still strikes me just as much as the first time.

“The photo is of Alex Gonzales and was shot in January of 2007 at the Los Altos Skatepark in Albuquerque, NM. It was in the middle of winter, and the days were cold and short which influenced how I made this image.

The short, cold days meant that it got dark earlier, and the evenings had this cool, blue feeling to it. In order to accentuate this cool, blue color and make the rider “pop out” more I used a technique that involves changing the camera’s white balance and using a flash with a gel.

In order to make this technique work the camera needs to have its white balance set to Tungesten (3700K), and flash needs to be gelled with a CTO. A CTO gel is a orange filter that goes over the front of a flash and changes the color temperature of the light coming from the flash. Setting the camera’s WB to Tungesten makes everything lit by ambient light (aka natural light) a blueish color, and then by using the CTO gel on the flash I am lighting the rider and warming up the color on just him. With out the CTO gel the flash would still illuminate the rider, but it wouldn’t provide the warm, contrasting light that the CTO provides.

The image was shot with a Canon 1D with a 15mm fisheye. Shutter speed was 1/500th and the aperture was F3.5. I used a Canon 580ex flash with a CTO gel as mentioned. The flash was placed around 75 degrees camera left.”

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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