My earliest memory of photography was watching my grandpa shooting landscapes somewhere around San Simeon when I was 6 in 1996. Another early photography memory that sticks out was at home, when lived in Los Angeles.
I took my parent’s Minolta SLR up into the hills above where I lived one day. I remember coming home with it in covered in dust. I’m sure I had no idea how to use it beyond pressing the shutter button. When I was about 13, I moved to San Luis Obispo. I lived on the hill above the train station.
Almost every day, I went skating around town. There was a spot at the end of the train station’s parking lot where people would bring rails and skate. I remember taking photos of people ollie-ing over a 1 foot wall, down about 10 feet to a lower parking lot, at that spot, where a building was under construction. About 2 years later, I moved to Morro Bay (a beach town, 12 miles west).
When I got my first full suspension mountain bike, a Gary Fisher Level Betty, for my birthday, I got into the freeride/downhill side of mountain biking and rode all over town and in the hills with friends. I also surfed a lot when I lived in Morro Bay. The last time I surfed was at my friend’s wedding (that I shot), the day before they got married. I got a few waves and most them ended in nose-dives… After living in San Luis Obispo County for at least 4 years, I moved to the Santa Ynez valley.
At the middle school I went to, I took a photo class that really got me excited with photography. I was shooting with only a digital point & shoot and disposables at the time. The point & shoot’s lag made timing motion nearly impossible, so I bought a 35mm SLR. I did my first downhill race, there in the valley and soon started shooting mountain bike racing.
During highschool, I took a ‘digital’ photo class at Santa Barbara City College with that film camera and learned the basic technical things I had no idea know about: exposure and basic compositon. As biking became more and more my life, so did photographing it.
My favorite subject to photograph is professional athletes -whether their mountain biking or doing other sports such as snowboarding. I also really like photos of natural and urban landscapes, though there isn’t as much of that kind of stuff on my site. Some day, I’d like to take a road trip through the dessert, shooting landscapes and abandonded buildings.
Most of the challenges I face are on the business side. It’s so competetive these days, especially in a niche sport like mountain biking. A lot of companies already have their own photographer or use photos from photographers they’ve known for a long time, so trying find work as a young photographer isn’t easy. On the photo side, one challenge is pressure; having to get the money shots with little time.
Last year, I shot a wedding for the first time. It was nuts getting the seperate groups and bride & groom together for portraits in different spots with not much more than half an hour, before we were off to where the ceremony would take place. Other than forgetting one certain photo that was requested, the portraits and the rest of the photos all came out awesome. Maybe I actually work well under pressure?
A project I recently finished is Golden State. It’s a slideshow on mountain biking in California; the riding and the riders. It uses stop motion combined with camera movements of film making. I started shooting for it last september and finished it about a month ago. You can check it out at http://goldenstateslideshow.us.
In five years… by the time I’m 25, I want to be making a living shooting athletes for companies.
Links:
I love the picture of the biker going up the hill. Great motivational shot ‘endurance’! The sun setting is a killer. Great shot
I gave up mountain biking after breaking both wrists, took up ohotography then as a bit of a safer hobby…