This photo immediately struck me as soon as I saw it. The lighting is wonderful, with a beautiful rimlight to the far right and a perfectly exposed and warmed fill light from the left. The composition is good- but almost centered. No big deal. I love the subdued yellow of the rail, the muted red in the sign and the deep blue gradient in the sky. The timing is on. More than anything, I love the shallow depth-of-field here. It really gives the rider an extra pop out of the background.
“Since breaking my ankle a couple of months ago I was stoked to go by the skatepark in my small hometown of Portales, New Mexico to hang out and pedal around a bit with Jaron Turnbow and Michael Sanchez for the afternoon. Feeling good with walking around this past Sunday, I asked if they wanted to go check out this spot that had been left by the road construction crews working in town.
We showed up to the spot as the sun began to set and they went to work moving the sign into different areas of this small parking lot trying to get a feel for it. I set up one light at first and gelled it to compensate for the warm sunlight and we shot a table and a few other tricks to flat before they moved the kicker close to the yellow rail that enclosed the parking lot.
A few warm up runs over the rail and Jaron started throwing tuck no-handers over it and seemed like he was getting pretty comfortable with the set-up so I called out a barspin. I still had the strobe left of Jaron gelled with a ¼ CTO about 15 feet away zoomed to 35mm and the strobe to the right of him I left bare 15 feet away zoomed to 85mm (would have had both strobes gelled but I was a bit absent minded and only had one ¼ CTO on hand). After one dead sailor over it Jaron nailed it second try.
I really liked the back of the College Cleaners building for this shot because of the old maroon sign and accidentally lucked out and realized after the fact that this composition had the sign lined up with our kicker set-up.
My set-up for this shot was my 5D markIII with a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 as well as two 580ex strobes set at ¼ power triggered with pocket wizards. I rarely take my 50mm out and I decided I needed to start using it more recently. I shot it almost wide open at 1.8 to get a shallow depth of field and kept the background a little under exposed with an ISO of 50 and my shutter synced at 1/200th.”
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Push It A Stop 