Back in 2009 when it was still snowing in NYC, I was skating our local indoor park like we all do every winter, when I was having fun learning how to boost 5+ft airs out of the 10ft halfpipe. One of my last sessions of the season there, I overshot the air and pretty much landed flat bottom from 15ft and sprained my ankle. As if that doesn't suck enough, I was extra pissed because it was a week before I was going to take a drive down to Florida and skate street for the first time in months with my good buddy Jay G. He was going to school down there so I decided to take the drive down there with him and stay the week while he settled in his dorm.
I obviously couldn't skate, so I took this opportunity to shoot some new photos. I was pretty much Jay's personal photographer as we stopped by a bunch of cities on our way down south. One of the cities was Tampa, FL where we met up with Jeph Howard when he moved away from Minnesota. They brought us to this DIY bank to rail which I could still say to this day might have been the most fun skate spot I've ever been to... "been to" since my ankle stopped me from skating it myself, I never got to actually enjoy it. But just look at it!
This was shot with the Canon 20D and an 18-55mm kit lens so it was a very basic set up and walking up and down the banks setting up flashes with a sprained ankle sucked. Nevertheless, I probably had almost as much fun shooting this spot as the boys did skating it.
Amongst the onslaught of tricks that were done on at this spot, this was Jay G's modest Alley-Oop Fishbrain. Even though this was over 6 years ago, I have yet to see a bank to rail this perfect again...
Canon 20D, Canon 18-55mm @35mm (iso100, f/4.5, 1/5s)
Ally-Oop Top Porn
Canon 20D, Canon 18-55mm @30mm (iso200, f/5.6, 1/6s)