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