Frontside 180 Tail Grab to Tree ride Tahoe, NV
There was a church being built right at the bottom of Diamond Peak last year. Forest had has his eye on it and suggested shooting a photo on the property. He rigged up this drop/tree ride. Cool stuff until the pastor kicked us out.
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.
VS.
Shot on a Canon EOS 1D Mark III with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens.
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.
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.
-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.
The following took place between December 30th, 2009 and January 3rd, 2010.
During the winter of 07/08 I lived in Stowe, VT and worked as Photo Editor at East Coast Snowboarding Magazine. My home mountain for that year was Stowe Mountain Resort and I fell in love with it’s woods and backcountry riding. Fast forward to the early winter of 2010 as Justin Mullen, Mike Bennett and myself are packed into Mike’s jeep on our way to Stowe.
Front & Back
By dusk we were deep into New York, heading north and took a quick moment to stop and stretch our legs. Once back on the road we continued north until we came to Crown Point, New York where the Lake Champlain Bridge used to stand. We were unaware that only days earlier the bridge had been demolished. This caused a two hour detour in our trip as we had to backtrack around the 110 mile long lake. Once on the other side it was a straight shot to my friend and our guide for the trip Pat Walsh’s house.
Lakeside view in NY
Creepy looking Mike with Cig
Lead by Pat Walsh a Stowe local who has been living in the town for 15 years. Day one started with a deep hike into the Notch of Stowe. Pat pointed out a steep section of the slope that would provide a good vantage point for some shots. Everyone took a slash in front of the camera and road down into the valley. Next up was a good sized cliff that required a dead eye aim to avoid all of the small trees in the landing. Both Justin and Mike landed tricks and avoided being impaled. We finished up the day with a fun and mellow ride down through the Notch to the Jeep.
Pat Walsh – Guide Man Extraordinaire
Mike Bennett slash in the Notch at Stowe.
Continued in Part 2.
http://www.benbirk.com/blog/2010/07/13/winter_stowe_part_2/
Last weekend I hung out with my buddies we had a great time. During the course of our party we took some photos. Well more like four gigs worth and spent about two hours shooting them all. Needless to say it was the highlight of the night. If you would like the “Party Wall” at your next party hit me up. It’s guaranteed to make the night.
-Mike Bennett speeding by
Three of my friends recently each bought a Yamaha r600 so snapping a few photos of their new bikes is just natural. So we took a lap up to the Rutter’s gas station to grab some food and then road back to Mikes house.
-Mike Bennett
-Mike Bennett
-Lance Fowler
-Mike Bennett Tail Press Harrisburg, PA
It had snowed before Christmas in Pennsylvania and my friends and I were ecstatic! We knew the snow might not last long and we had to take quick advantage of the situation. There were tons of rails we could have chose from, but this steep 28 stair with the rail that had balls on it was the one in our sights. Doug Usko and Mike Bennett shoveled off the stairs while I struggled to light the rail (I had not been shooting for quite some time and was very rusty).
Doug was the first to slide the whole rail and I tuned off my PocketWizards to take an ambient light portrait of him. I turned back to shoot Mike as he tail pressed the whole rail first try, but to his and mine disappointment I had forgotten to turn my PW back on. OH NO! I had to ask him to press the rail a few more times until his body position and nose height were good enough to have a keepable photo. Unfortunately is was still not quite as good as his first try had been but it was getting dark and we had other rail we wanted to hit. The image was good enough to run in the January issue of East Coast Snowboarding Magazine though 
.
While waiting to get directions to the next rail we took some quick portraits against a brick wall. No flash was used for the portraits just the the ambient light from the lights that were hanging from above. Once the directions got in and we got to the rail we were not sure if we wanted to hit it. It was defiantly a balance beam rail and no real tricks were done. With temps in the teens or below we called it a night and all headed back to our homes.
-Doug Usko (FILM)
-Mike Bennett (FILM)
-Mike Bennett
-Doug Usko
-Mike Bennett FS 50-50 Hershey, PA
-Doug Usko FS 50-50