It was a sunny but cold Saturday in San Diego over the Thanksgiving weekend when I met up with Damien Wlson, Nick Wood, Lyle Shivak and Russell Day at a local skatepark near downtown at 10:30 am. We all warmed up for a bit and then headed to the first spot. As we approached, I saw a bright blue handicap ramp railing zig-zagging down a small hill in front a community center. We originally went to this spot to get a clip of Nick. However, due to unseen circumstances, Nick was not able to get the clip so Russell seized the opportunity to skate another feature of the railing.

I didn’t want to get in the way of Nick’s filming, ’cause I had all my gear, so I had to figure out where, how, and if I wanted to shoot the photo. After some consideration, I set up my flash to face Russell as he was doing his trick; I wanted enough light to show the cross bar of the rail. The main danger element of this particular trick. I shot a couple pictures from behind Russell, but Nick’s head kept getting in the frame and the landing was obscured.

Before I could change my angle, Russell took a bad fall and landed on his ankle wrong. He said he was done for the day. I hadn’t gotten a decent shot. But after five minutes he decided it wasn’t as injured as he thought, so he just kept on doing Soyale after Soyale, which allowed me to just keep shooting till I got the shot I liked. For this picture I was basically in the middle of the road and slightly to the left of the rail. I could clearly see that the trick was a Soyale, and Russell would be turning towards the camera looking for his landing with the cross bar in view. The biggest obstacle for the shot was that there was a large tree that blocked the sunlight from shining consistently on the rail and Russell. I used a Nikon Speedlight SB-600 at full power and a Nikon D5000 DSLR with a 18-55mm @ 55mm, f18, 1/200s ISO 500. — Steve Steinmetz