Ben Birk » Photography

Academy Catalog 2010/2011

Ben Birk — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:31:36 +0000

In the spring of 2009 I spent five days shooting with the Academy team around Donner Pass, Sugar Bowl, and Kingvale. It was a great experience and lead to half a dozen published shots including my first cover. Below are my images that made it into the catalog. Along with a video I shot this winter at Alpine Meadows with team rider Will Bateman demonstrating the new boards.

You can check out the whole catalog on the Academy Site here.

Hanging Out In The Rain

Ben Birk — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:09:19 +0000

VS.

Shot on a Canon EOS 1D Mark III with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens.

On the Roof

Ben Birk — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 03:46:26 +0000

More images of Olivia Arden. I know you guys don’t like looking at girls as much as they do guys on snowboards. My web views have been down. But I need to clean out Lightroom and get my stuff online. Don’t worry there will be more Winter in Summer posts once I finish up submissions to one last magazine. If this was a snowboard shot I would pick my favorite and only show it. Because it’s not I have no idea which is the best so now you get it all. All shot on a Canon EOS 1D Mark III with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM.

Hammock

Ben Birk — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:53:13 +0000

My current job has me working 12 hour shifts which leaves little time for posting photos. I also have a mounting backlog of photos to post. So I will be posting more soon, but with less writing and less photos.

I don’t know which one I like more.

Both photos are of ms. Olivia Arden and shot on a Canon EOS 1D Mark III with Canon EF 24-70mm F/2.8L USM lens under ambient light.

B&W Panoramic

Ben Birk — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:38:59 +0000

I have a cheap $2 plastic Ultonic Panoramic Camera that I love to use. All images shot on Kodak 400 Tri-X.

ESPN July Zoom Gallery

Ben Birk — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:39:01 +0000

ESPN published another installment of their Zoom Gallery and my image of Travis Kennedy made the list. See the gallery here. Image was shot on a Canon EOS 1D Mark III with a Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM. Elinchrom Ranger RX with A-Head provided my lighting fired via a pair of PocketWizard Plus IIs.

See the image on flickr by clicking on the photo above.

Jerod Stoner

Ben Birk — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:24:49 +0000

-Jerod rips around a corner

Stoner is hands down the best dirt bike rider I know. He has won countless races throughout the US and has even been to Travis Pastrana’s house to ride before. Last year he won a large race in PA and this year the event organizers wanted to sell t-shirts with images of the winners riders on them. Jerod phoned me up about shooting him for the shirt and we set up a date.

At his house he has a few tracks and after looking around them we selected this turn for our shoot. I used my Elinchrom Ranger RX with A-Head along with two Sunpak 555s fired via PocketWizard Plus IIs to light the image. It was shot on the Canon EOS-1D Mark III with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM lens. My exposer was 1/250th at f/5.0. It was critical for Jerod to hammer his turn at the same spot each run because of my low DOF. Below is a another image of Jerod along with one photo of his buddy on a different turn.

-Jerod Stoner

-Sean Doran

Adriana Sky/Knotfal

Ben Birk — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:56:57 +0000

Neil Palumbo is a local photographer/friend that lives in my neighborhood. He has been following the band Adriana Sky (formally Knotfal) around for over a year now and asked me if I would be interested in shooting the band at a local bar in Harrisburg. I had never shot a band before and in the past I would have been turned off to the idea. I had not been shooting in quite some time though, so getting out to shoot anything was a warm welcomed idea. We meet up around 7:30pm and made the 30 min drive north. Here is what followed.

-Meet up at Sandwich Man for a hoggie and beer

-Good artwork all around the shop

-Dan the drummer

-Joe the Bassist

-Marty the Vocals

-Mark the Guitarist

-Went back to the bar and they started to play

-Mark and Joe

-Marty standing out

-Dan can play well while posing it up for the camera

-Joe sang a Green Day song

-The crowd got involved

-Mark looking like a shark

-Group shot to end out the night

I had a great time the whole night, the band was really nice, and it was fun to shoot something different. The whole night was shot at 3200 ISO with a shutter speed of between 1/30th to 1/60th at f/2.8. These are settings my camera never sees. Speaking of cameras I shot that night with the Canon EOS-1D Mark III and used the Canon Fisheye EF 15mm f/2.8 and the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM. I loved being able to shoot at f/2.8 in the low light with the added benefit of separating my subjects from the sometimes crazy background. In this case I think the gear would make or break a shoot. It would have been nice to edit the images in LR 3 to get rid of all of the noise from shooting at a high ISO, but I think LR 2.7 did a fair job.

Quick Skate Shot

Ben Birk — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:57:29 +0000

-Mr. Doug Usko Rock to Fakie at the Reid Menzer Memorial Skatepark in York, PA

Shot at 1/500th at f/4.0 ISO 100 with Canon EOS-1D Mark III & EF 24-70mm F/2.8L USM.

Winter in Summer: Big Boulder, PA

Ben Birk — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:08:34 +0000

-Billy Keil AKA Bobby AKA Bobby Big Hands with a most proper backside tailslide

Every year I like to make it up to Big Boulder Ski Resort in Blakeslee Pennsylvania to shoot their park for the various magazine’s resort guide issues. Big Boulder is host to a park that has been in the Transworld Top 5 East Coast Park for the last 3+ years.

-Matt Bothfeld

Always down to get the best photography Big Boulder set me up with a closed park and access to it’s team of riders. It’s always a great time hanging out with some of my PA buddies and shooting photos. We has a session on their three jump line for most of the day before moving down to the plaza to shoot the rails. Dom Luza started off the rail riding with a quick switch backside boardslide on the DFD.

-Dom Luza switch backside boardslide

The day ended with a long session in the plaza on the down barrel rail. Trip Brown and Matt Roberge were there with video cameras so Bobby, Kyle, and Dom laid on the big business. After about 100 different tricks were done, everyone called it quits and headed into town for a bit of pizza before going our separate ways.

-Kyle Luza switch nosepress late at night