Extreme Journalist

Jared was allegedly a “pro” BMXer. He even has gone so far as to unearth old video parts, and has a plastic medal from an early 90s BMX contest hanging up in the office. Despite all of this, it’s still quite amazing to me when he actually breaks out the bike and can do some tricks. I mean, he’s old! So when we went up to Mark Rainha’s jungle ramp in the SW hills, I was impressed to see Jared even carry his bike up the treacherous and steep dirt stairs leading to the 8-foot wide, four-foot tall ramp in the woods, but even more impressed was when he proceeded to actually ride it. I felt this miraculous occurance needed some serious documentation, so I broke out Jared’s camera (which he’d also lugged up there) and attempted to capture the moment. Though I stumbled a bit using a Nikon (everything is backwards dammit!) and nearly killed myself trying to get a sweet angle on the ivy-and-thorn-covered hill, overall, I succeeded in capturing Jared actually riding BMX. Which, let’s face it, is sort of like photographing a Sasquatch.

aaron3

Aaron was concerned having his finger on the brake made him look like a puss, but I assured him that was not what was doing it.

For some reason my work day turned into a very brief foray into bike photography. Apparently Jared wanted to know what he looks like on the other side of the lens, which as it turned out, he wasn’t very happy with. He only let me use one photo I shot of him, but since Aaron isn’t here, I get to pick the ones I like of him!

The shoot was filled with Jared telling me where to stand and letting me know I “wasn’t shooting the right thing.” As far as I could tell, there was no point when they were actually “doing anything” but I suppose that’s what happens when you shoot something you know very little about. So take that as a note to aspiring action sports photographers. Even when it seems like there is nothing going on, apparently, there is a “correct time to shoot.” Follow the jump for a few more shots from today’s shoot. Hard to believe, but I won’t be saving these for print.

read more »

Everyone wants to be a skateboarder (except of course rockstars and Gods.) Luckily for me, I am totally awesome at skateboarding. That is of course, unless you put me in a video with people who are actually good. I guess since Jared’s video is arsty, I will forgive him for making my stunts look less cool by juxtaposing them against Ben and Scott.


Dude Ranch Mini Ramp: Portland from Souney Media on Vimeo.