Sacramento scene fixture Dustin Dixon and photographer Nick Korompilas team up to provide a clip for another PHOTO JOURNAL out of Northern California. Warm lighting and a clean 540 make for a nice combination!

We originally met up at this spot to warm up on the small benches at the school before going to some other Sacramento spots. After skating the benches for an hour or two we went to the back of the school to this bank that Dustin had been talking about for awhile, but it was hard to find a good time to skate it because it lands into a main street. It turned out on this particular day that it wasn’t too busy, so I set up my gear. The first thing I noticed about the spot was the long sidewalk that would make a perfect foreground, so I put on the 70-200mm lens. Next, I placed two Sunpak strobes to the left of the frame, both on full power fairly close to each other. One was on a lightstand to light up his top-half and one was on the ground to help him pop from the dark trees in the back. I also had the sun aimed down from the top right at full power, luckily his batteries were full too and provided enough light for me to bump up my shutter speed to 1/320 opposed to the normal shutter sync of 40d’s, 1/250th. We waited for a few cars to go by, let Dustin get it clean, then captured Dustin Dixon landing this flawless 540 from the transition on the left to the street. — Nick Korompilas