This shot was taken using a NIKON D5000 at ISO 100, f/1.8, for 1/4000sec
Kick Flip
20+ years ago, during my high school years, I was big into skateboarding, as was my best friend. Time has moved on for me, but my friend, is still at it. This time though he skates with his son.
A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to head down and visit him and got to spend the day just hanging out, like old times. Not really having any plans other than spending the day together. He and his son went out to skate some in the area, so I could take some photos. Getting shots of skateboarders is actually pretty more difficult that I originally imagined. One of the issues that I had, along with just the composition aspect, was being on the “right” side of the action. It seemed like every trick that was going to be executed, I was on the wrong side and I kept getting the back side of things. As soon as I realized it, I would switch positions so I could be in the front, but he would end up doing something completely different.
Now, I understand that if we could have “setup” the shot and the trick, but that kind of takes away from the fun that they were having, so I didn’t want to do that, and just decided to work organically and deal with it.
Overall the day was good, and I feel that I got some great shots of him.
I will say that with this particular trick, he did land it, but there are others that I have that look very cool in an image, but he didn’t always land them. But since I only capture a split second of the action, you will never know, unless I tell you.