Posted 1/1/05
Friday night session at Ramp Rats in Petaluma

Shooting photos in the dim lighting conditions found in the warehouse space is quite a challenge. There is simply not enough available light to shoot without a flash. I even tried used my prime lens at 1.8, and it doesn't even come close to being fast enough to capture the action of a quick moving sport like ours. The drawback to shooting with the on camera flash with point and shoot cameras is the result: an overexposed subject floating in a black background. Even tweaking the image in Photoshop came up with unsatisfactory results. This evening, I decided to take a different approach. My plan was to shoot with a slower shutter speed and rely on the on camera flash to freeze the action. Take a look at the results; I may be on to something here.. next time I'll be armed with my new Canon Speedlite which is on its way from B&H right now. Hopefully I'll get closer to the results I'm looking for soon.

I think this is the only shot I was happy with from the night; this kid was shredding all night, firing off 360s, superman seat grabs, and just straight up going off. In this shot he busted this tail whip right in front of where I was sitting.

Sweet trails style- transfer to the bowl

Mike Haderer representing MTB with a nice flattie

Drew on the transfer
Chipper - same line

This transfer was a cool line a lot of the guys were busting. This guy was boosting it. That's Chris Duncan in the bowl shooting with his new camera, a Canon Eos 20D. Welcome to the Canon club Chris!

Chris wasn't just taking pictures. He shows this box jump what's up with this 360 table.

Drew shows me how to do a lip slide.

Hopefully next time I'm up, I'll be able to get this shot dialed. That's it for now.

Or not. Here's another shot, of Drew. Transfer to vert wall.