Tyler and I decid­ed to com­bine our hob­bies (bik­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy respec­tive­ly), so we head­ed to the local skate and bike park after work. It’s amaz­ing to see him on his bike. It’s a part of him, an exten­sion of his body. I got a ride home while he rode his bike, and even though we left at the same time he beat me there. He was pret­ty burned out that day, due to it being his first time out this year, he still man­aged the ener­gy for some great shots.

At the park, we met these 15-years-old kids. As Tyler noticed, you can tell a lot from some­one from the bike they ride. The kid with the most skills (black shirt and jeans) had a used bike, some­thing he put togeth­er him­self. The oth­er two kids had shiny new bikes with hel­mets. Tyler said it revealed how their par­ents were sup­port­ive of their hob­by, but weren’t as hard­core in their hearts.

The great thing about Tyler is that he had no qualms about ask­ing these kids, ten years his junior, how to do cer­tain tricks. He has such a con­fi­dence that he was­n’t embar­rassed about it at all.

The ses­sion was an exer­cise in motion pho­tog­ra­phy. It’s very dif­fer­ent from dif­fer­ent what my usu­al por­traits and still shots. Being placed in such a sit­u­a­tion forced me to learn how to use AF Servo, which turned out to be more use­ful than I could have imag­ined.

The con­cept of motion is so sub­tle. You stop a frame in motion, and from look­ing at the bike you can’t tell which direc­tion they’re going. It’s the mus­cles, the expres­sions on their faces, the direc­tion of con­cen­tra­tion that tell you what a bik­er is try­ing to do.