This bridge underpass has been in the back of my mind since the first time I saw it in 2004. But I never took the opportunity to go out and photograph it, and in all honesty I am glad I didn’t, ’cause this shot with Frank Joubert, one of South Africa’s top skaters, turned out to be one of my favorite images ever shot.

We spent a Sunday morning in the banking district of Johannesburg, which is notorious for being a bust, although luck was on our side this morning and Frank managed to get three shots for his magazine profile before we decided to leave for spot two, on this strangely quite Jozi morning. I recalled this bridge a couple of blocks down, and we left to go and have a look. I asked Frank to do whatever he could from the bank (the angle is extremely severe), so he managed to run from across the road, side stepping up the bank as high as he possibly could, and doing this Mute 180 off. I am not sure how he managed to get this high!

The lighting was fairly simple, seeing that there wasn’t enough natural light on the background. I used two Sunpak Auto 555 flashes, placed almost 45 degrees front right to light Frank, and the same from the back left, used as both a rim on Frank and background light on the bank. I used whatever little natural light there was on the foreground to frame the shot. Shot on a Nikon D700 DSLR with a 24-70mm lens. — George Rabe