Yep, still snowboarding in May. Maybe not on a mountain but in a Northwest Boy Scouts of America jamboree. Last weekend Silver Mt. called BFC (Boarders for Christ) and asked us to put on a demo for the Boy Scouts of America jamboree at the fairgrounds in Spokane, WA and bring out our snow trailer and snow for this event. It required 98 bags of snow for this event, which lasted a pretty long time considering every bag had around 50-60 pounds of snow in it. I didn’t ride so I brought out the camera gear and shot for the majority of the time. I wasn’t super excited on most of my photos but I still shot and had a good time. It was pretty iffy weather, it went from super sunny to super cloudy and everything in between so that required me to change flash settings constantly. Im still learning a ton with flash photography and I have started noticing how tech lighting can get. Here are the shots from the jam:

Dash Kamp

Josh Wing

Dash Kamp

For the first shot of Dash I had a flash on the first stair (counting from top to bottom) pointing toward Dash and the rail. The photo of Josh Wing with a true and proper tail press is shot with the 540EZ on camera and isn’t as good of a shot as the one of Dash but still kind of a fun shot primarely because of the properness of the trick which I have found to be key in action sport photography. I think that I got perfect timing on the shot of Dash mainly because of facial expression. Facial expression is something that I have been trying to work on a lot because that can basically make or break a snow shot (if its a close up shot, totally depending on the style/angle that your going for) and skate shot, which brings me to the next thing that I shot. Also last week a bunch of us from BFC went out to the Post Falls skate park to hang with that group of guys and just talk and chill with the guys (some girls) over there. Since I don’t really skate at all I snapped a few shots over there just to document the good times. Here are the shots:

Joey Ozol

Greg Foeller

Tyler Jenicek

Josh Tyvan

Josh Tyvan

With the first photo of Joey Ozol, it is my more favorite in the group along with Tyler Jenicek”s shot. Both of them seem to give the stronger photo impression to me. Tell me what you thing with that. In the photo of Greg Foeller, it looks like a clump (large clump) of sensor dust but really it is just a very annoying cloud. After looking at it a few times I have come to the conclusion that it almost adds to the photo in a positive way. Yes a little distracting but I can not move clouds out of the way and didn’t feel that I should clone something like that out. With the first photo of Joey, I had a light placed to the bottom left of the ledge shooting up towards Joey. I seems like perfect lighting to me because of the sharpness of the subject but also the depth of field in the whole frame. Also the light on the face seems great and though it isn’t a very serious trick I feel like it is on of my stronger shots. The second photo of Greg I had a flash directly below him shooting vertically at Greg while he is doing a very proper grab. Something that I love about that shot is you see the full subject, and both hands. Sometimes while shooting skateboarding, the hands are either hidden behind the body, or they are hiding the body. This seems like it is neither so I was pleased with it. The third photo of Tyler I had a very similar light set up like the first one but it was just farther back and on a different ledge. The sky and background seem to really fulfill this shot along with the style that Tyler has. Props to him right? Last but not least the two photos of Josh Tyvan. With the first one I had a light to the left, strobing underneath the rail that is not visible, but still gets hands and face. and for the last one of the fly-out melon I had a light to the bottom right just out side of the frame shooting upwards towards Josh. I feel that every time I go out and shoot with the flashes that I learn something more. I really am loving flash photography a ton and really want to learn more. Here is a link to Blabac Photo, my inspiration and probably one of the coolest guys in the skate photography scene. He has been around since skating really got big. He still shoots covers for Transworld like he did back in 2001, and the shots that Blabac produces are just super rad. He wrote/created a photo book called Blabac Photo: the Art of Skateboard Photography It is a book about his skateboarding work in the last 20 years and I really want to go purchase it.

Thanks a lot, please comment.

-Steve

For my movie poster I did it in a horror film theme and kind of a creepy feel. I was mainly inspired by the movie poster photo on the class blog, but kind of gave it my own twist and made it more my own. Innovate, not imitate right? First of all I shot a photo of my friend Cody in some trees behind my house. I put one strobe behind him for back light and originally I had a light to the right and behind the camera and then a light in the back for fill light but didn’t get the whole “creepy” feel. So I got rid of the front light and just used the fill light to light up Cody from behind and bring the shadows of his legs to the front. I used the motion blur filter over a lot of the text fonts to give it that horror movie film look. Enjoy:

-Steve

Yes, back on the water. Last Tuesday, I went on on the boat with some friends and we wanted to get some wake surfing in. The water was 51 degrees and the air was around 55. So It was still very cold, but way worth it. I figured I would bring my camera to visually document this event so I did and we took some fun photos. I don’t usually shoot watersports at all but it would be something to get into. It is defiantly pretty hard because your very limited angle wise and lighting wise. I really have no experience with it so I guess the mess-around-photo-shoot turned into a learning experience. It would be sweet to go out again and do some stuff with lights on the boat and maybe a chase boat to get some good action shots. I have some ideas but with the water being so cold, not that many people are down to ride.

Later in the week I shot some stuff on my slack line. Put a strobe on either side of Cody (the slacker) and shot at it from above and to the left of the line. Slacking has become quite popular and it is defiantly one of my favorite things to have. I still have a ton to learn about lighting but I now have a lot better understanding of where to put the lights with out having to move them around a lot trying to figure out what will look good. I am going to try to get a lot of posts that have to do with lighting in the next few weeks and really try to progress with the art of strobing.

And to finish the week off I shot some more skating. I have started looking at a lot more skating shots and magazine covers and so many of the “pro” shots are super good, but they are super simple. Yes, there are the shots that are ultra-wide and super tech lighting, but the majority is just simplicity. That is something I am going to try and work on is just keeping it simple. I have looked through all my skate shots from this year and last year and as I have become more interested in skate photography, I have noticed I have developed a style for me. That is one more area that I have been working at is to get a style of photography that represents what I do and stick with it. If you look at any professional photographers in the skiing/snowboarding/wakeboarding/skateboarding community, they all have their standard style and maybe a little flare every now and then, but the majority of their work is all THEIR style. That is what photographer Erik Seo has done. He has simple shots, with simple lighting, but the photos are really good. He is always pushing the limits of the skiing industry. Another photographer in the same industry as Erik is Darcy Bacha, he takes similar approaches on photography like Erik, but has a little more tech in his photos. THe thing that links both of those photographers together is that they both have a style that is their own, and they stick to it. That is something that I would like to develop in my work.

Here are this weeks shots:

And Last but not least, a few fisheye photos:

Nothings exciting, just messing around and a very attractive photo of Twitchell himself.

Thanks for viewing,

-Steve

Lights? Check.

Camera? Check.

Action? Check.

It is really nice having friends that can actually skateboard. It really makes photography a lot simpler. It helps so much when you are trying to get a shot and they are really cooperative and just down to shred. This last week I shot some skateboarding with the flashes and was pretty pumped. I have had the flashes for a while but just recently got the new Cyber Synchs and seriously my world of photography has been expanded drastically. I thank my two good friends Matt and Joey for providing the quality skateboarding.

Matt has a this old mini ramp he made about 6 years ago and still has it and it just sits out in his woods. The shots of the wooden mini ramp are really special to Joey, Matt and I mainly just because of how sketchy the mini ramp is. I tried to get a really simple shot to show the sketchy-ness of the ramp. The mini ramp is completely vert and almost over vert which just makes it so much harder to skate and Joey and Matt were shredding. This next weekend, we are going back with more lights and moving the RV so we can have a very cool photo shoot out in the woods with a random mini ramp.

The Coeur d’Alene skatepark photos I thought are pretty sweet, just good ol’ natural shreddin’. I didn’t get super tech with lights at the park, just one 430EX flash placed up on top of the deck and pointed at the coping. Something I have tried to express via my photography, in this instance, skateboarding, is showing strong emotion including facial expression, composition and in this instance the skateboarders style. Matt and Joey both really have great style skateboarding and sometimes while shooting skateboarding it is hard to express ones style on a skateboard.

Here are the shots:

Thanks,

-Steve

For the Love of what you are probably asking yourself if you haven’t heard of Boarders For Christ or don’t live in Coeur d’Alene area. But For the Love is a benefitting fundraiser that BFC (Boarders For Christ) puts on. This one was specifically for the Shadrick family who is adopting two Ethiopian orphans from the YWAM orphanage in Ethiopia. Many local artists (including myself) donated pieces of their artwork or photography and the art was auctioned off. All the Art was very beautiful and it was such a blessing that people had such a desire to give. After the auction was over, the Shadricks had raised over $1,600 and 10% or that is going to the YWAM Orphanage and another 10% is headed toward Anthem’s (a local church) adoption ministry. If you would like to check out how the adoption process is going, which I highly suggest that you do, please go to theshadrickslove.com.

On to the photos I took at For The Love. I shot it all with a 50mm 1.8. I wasn’t really planning on taking photos but I had my camera so I figured I might as well snap some photos. The lighting in at Java On Sherman (where For The Love was held) is quite sad so I shot at ƒ/1.8 pretty much the whole evening which has its pluses and minuses. I love shooting people candid so this was a great opportunity for that for sure. Here are the photos from May 1st, 2010 For The Love of the Shadricks:

Now here are some fun little photos I took earlier in the week:

So you might be wondering what that “purple creepy thing” is. Well it is a Bucephalus Psychic Rat that is a plush toy of a cthulhu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu) that my photo teacher has to dissect for his own personal project. Haha.

Thanks a lot,

-Stephen

Yeah, that’s right focus on tha 2OH!8 Fool. Last week I shot my stuff for the focus 208 project for Idaho and had a little fun with it. I shot primarily on Sherman Avenue but a little bit on Lakeside and 4th street. The music is by Zack Harvest and I thank him for making some quality music I could use for the slideshow. Here it is:

Focus 208 from stephen Sturges on Vimeo.

Also here are a few shots that I really liked from the project:

Let’s get patriotic!

-Steve