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.

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

-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.

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

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

-Kyle Pearson

-Mike Bennett

-Lance Fowler

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 FS 50-50

-Doug Usko (FILM)

-Mike Bennett (FILM)

-Mike Bennett

-Doug Usko

-Mike Bennett FS 50-50 Hershey, PA

Olivia Arden (FILM)

Olivia Arden(Film)

Olivia Arden(Film)

Olivia Arden(Film)

Hot Wheels(FILM)

Sleeping Cat(Film)

Smoke Stack(FILM)

Coca-Cola(FILM)

Arrow & Puddle(FILM)

October 18, 2009
We had heard it snowed in the Poconos a foot two days earlier and seeing that it was October any excuse to try and snowboard was good enough. Mike Bennett, Doug Usko, and myself loaded up my Subaru forester and made the two hour drive to Camelback. Unfortunately upon our arrival we discover almost all the snow was gone with small patches of unrideable snow being all that remained. Not wanting to make the drive home quite yet we, went to Big Boulder to meet up with Matt Roberge, Luke Henning, and Jayell White.

Big Boulder had a little bit more snow at best, but we decided to hike to the top of the mountain (all 500 vertical feet of it) to see what snow might lie up there. Over halfway up we realized the top would hold nothing more then the bottom and decided to shovel a small landing for a sketchy bomb drop. Mike and Doug both hit the drop, were smashed to bits on the too small landing and over the feature quickly. We hung out talking and laughing for a while before returning to the cars, where we parted ways and all drove home.

Winter was coming soon though…

The Group Hiking

Mike Bennett mid hike

Jayell White

Luke Henning

Mike Bennett Bomb Drop

Mike Bennett (Film)

Doug Usko (Film)

Jayell White (Film)

Matt Roberge (Film)

I shot photos along the trip on the LX3, which you can view in this flickr slideshow.

Justin also made a video edit from our trip.