Back in 2011 the city of Parkersburg, West Virginia was building a new river front park and at the same time, building its first ever skate park. I had been working with the city on the skate park and dealing with suit and tie type peoples, so when I saw the drawings for this river front park, I had to pretend like it wasn’t going to be the dopest street spot our little town had ever seen and that we would have absolutely no reason to continue illegally skating at places like this once we had our own skate park. And to be fair, after 20 years of being kicked out of the same skate spots and dealing with all the rednecks and “skater fag” hate, most of us were more than willing to hibernate into park rat heaven.
But you know how that goes. Skate parks get boring and curiosity gets the best of us all. We started breaking in the top ledge not long ago and with some gnarly sunsets for a back drop, I wanted to try and get some shots of my homie William (B.C.) Fijolek. We’re all pretty much a bunch of rusty, old, never-has-beens. But B.C. was still able to lace a few moves for the camera.
Both shots were taken with a Canon 5d Mk III. The kind grind above was shot at 17mm, f/4, 1/320, 1600 ISO. The negative makio below was shot at 70mm, f/2.8, 1/320, and 640 ISO. Both got a little help from a 580ex II at the top of the stairs, placed at varying distances, and fired at full power.
Love this!
Thanks!