Nate Perry has been a busy beaver this winter. With Lipsmack in full filming mode, Nate has been turning out new rails left and right. One morning I headed out to the Projects to see one of Nate’s newest creations and to get some photos while Patrick Wieland shot for Lipsmack. This creation, was mainly a down rail made out of large PVC pipe, with a little kicker on the front so rider’s could get up on top. The cool thing about the rail (and unlike most rails at the Projects) was that it floated. This allowed Nate to position the rail in Lake 2 at the Projects, which is normally just used for boat riding, to give the photos and videos a different look and feel.

That morning Patrick was testing out a fog machine, placed on a floating dock right next to the rail, so I knew it would provide for some interesting and different photos. The difficult part about the shoot is that the sun was rising over the opposite shore, so I would be shooting into backlit situations all morning. Nate and Brian Reeder went to town on the rail though and working with the fog and reeds along the shoreline made the shoot different and fun. After moving positions a few times to mix things up and find a good angle, I finally found an ideal spot and just waited for the guys to get a solid trick in.

I originally started right alongside the rail, but after just a few hits by Nate I quickly decided it wasn't going to yield the results I was looking for

Moving downshore a bit, as well as up from the water allowed me to get a bit more fog in the photo, as well as to shoot through some of the tall grass and add a layer to the foreground of the image

When I moved back down to the water and shot from around a little corner/mound of land sticking out, I knew I'd found the spot to make a good image. From there I just needed the guys to lock in a solid trick

A couple hits later Nate knocked out this little guy and we had a photo we could use in the magazine

The shot of Nate provided a unique image for the magazine. Here are the settings:

  • Canon EOS 1D MarkII N
  • Canon 70-200mm f2.8 L II @ 2oomm
  • ISO 250, f/4.5, 1/2000th

When I knew I had a good shot of Nate from that angle I moved positions again and changed lenses to shoot Reeder. This is always a good idea when you’re shooting multiple riders on the same location/rail/obstacle. If I stayed in the same place where I shot Nate all the shots of Reeder would look the same. Once you run one somewhere the others from that same angle become useless. By just changing up the lens and location a bit, you can create a photo that looks entirely different.

Once I knew I had a solid shot of Nate, I changed angles to shoot Reeder

I got this shot by using my 16-35mm wide angle lens at 16mm and putting it right above the water’s surface next to the floating dock that was holding the fog machine. Shooting through the grass and with a corner of the dock sticking into the frame add some different layers and textures to the photo, making it look much different than the shot of Nate that ran in the mag.