Tell us about yourself and what you do…
I’m a regular ol’ white boy that enjoys travelling, riding bikes, taking pictures, and hanging out with women. I’m about to be 27 years old and I live in Long Beach, California—and I absolutely love it.
From the time I was in high school I knew I wanted to build a career around bikes. As I got older though I realized I didn’t really want to have a “job”, so I’ve tried to make my sources of income seem like as little “work” as possible. My full-time source of income is working as the online editor for Transworld’s Ride BMX Magazine (ridebmx.com). And my other income comes are from small graphic design gigs, freelance photography, and concepts like the Flatland Calendar. But all of my income streams are, for the most part, what I’d want to be doing even if I wasn’t “working”.
These days I really want to travel as much as possible to experience as many cultures, places, and scenarios as possible. And more often than not I want my travels to include riding and shooting BMX photos too. I’ve done a good job of crafting my life around what I love to do, and I plan to keep that up.
2009 Hollywood Jam
Guess I’m not 100% a flatlander yet…I have no clue what this trick is called. I do know it’s a simple variation of one of my only flatland tricks (backwards steamroller) and Chad Johnston showed me how to do it. Photo by Sam Proctor.
How did you develop the skills to be able to work at Ride US?
I have always been somewhat creative, and I have always been into art and photography. But most importantly, I have always been super motivated and driven, and have always believed in myself. Once I told myself that I wanted to work at Ride (this happened my senior year of high school, around 2001), I didn’t stop focusing on that goal until I achieved it. I went to college and spent about four and a half years learning a bunch of the skills I have today. Some were learned in a classroom, and some at various jobs, but most of the skills I learned by just doing things on my own, asking people about stuff, and travelling.
2009 Jomorpro
I helped organize the flatland event at the 2009 Jomorpro, but I didn’t enter the contest. I did get a chance to get a real quick photo on Justin Miller’s bike though doing (you guessed it) one of my only tricks—a backards steamroller. Photo by Jeremy Pavia.
As you don’t come from the traditional Flatland background, what is your motivation for supporting it?
Well, my first memory of BMX, and what made me fall in love with it, was the intro to the movie Rad where they are riding flatland. But you are right, I started riding little dirt hills and racing, then I got into street riding, and finally started riding ramps in college. But I always liked flatland—I just wasn’t ever around it until just after I graduated college in 2005 and started hanging out with Terry Adams. He really brought out the passion I have for flatland. I guess his passion rubbed off on me.
2009 Ninja Spin
I didn’t even bring my bike to Monaco for the 2009 Ninja Spin contest because I didn’t know how the travel arrangements would be. And since I was on vacation when I went there and wasn’t obligated to do any work, I went ahead and entered the contest on Justin Miller’s bike. I ended up getting second place in the beginner class and was probably more shocked than anyone. The sword is still displayed in my living room. Photo by Christian Van Hanja.
When I love something, I want to share it with as many people as possible. And nowadays since I’m in a position where I can share flatland with the world, I share it just like I share anything else I’m passionate about. As the online editor at ridebmx.com, posting flatland content is no different than posting anything else. It’s all freestyle BMX, so if it is quality content, it all goes on the site.
How do you find the diversity between print and online media?
Of course I feel like both print and online media are super important. And like most people I realize that the two serve different purposes. So since this topic can go in a ton of directions, I’ll just say what each means to me…
LA Gap
I’ve been riding mostly street these days, and this gap from the loading dock over the cement chunk in Los Angeles is one of the clips that will be in a little personal video part I’m working on for the end of ’09. Photo by Jeff Zienliski.
My main job and number one priority/obligation is collecting and creating content that is viewed only online. And as I said, when I love something, I want to share it with people. So it’s amazing to be able to share so much BMX with hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And it’s amazing to see so much BMX from different people around the world.
But the photographer in me, and the creative side of me loves to see my work printed. I love how printed images look and feel. I love how the images interact with the typography and design. And I love the fact that you keep magazines for years and years and they leave such a lasting impression with you. With Ride though, there isn’t any room right now for me to help out with content in the printed magazine, so it’s cool that I get to do side projects like the Flatland Calendar, and it’s great to see other photos of mine printed as adverts, or on product packages, or wherever else they end up…
It is great that you have been able to make it to some of the bigger flatland contests around the world; how do you find they compare to say, the Dew Tour?
Flatland contests still seem much more intimate than big contests like Dew Tour or X Games. The crowds are closer to the action, and for the most part, are riders or heavy followers of the sport, whereas the crowd at a Dew Tour are non-participants that just want to see a good show as if they were at a concert or monster truck rally. But they are really similar to the hometown style contests like Jomopro or the Toronto BMX Jam. At the flatland contests, as cliché as it sounds, it really feels like a big family reunion of sorts. Everyone is friends with each other, and it is a great mix of people. I really love the international diversity of flatland events too. I love being able to look around and realize that I’m eating dinner with a guy from Finland, another from Spain, another from Singapore, and another from Germany, while we are all in Japan.
Dane Beardsley Ohio
Dane Beardsley only likes to shoot photos in spots that he would actually session, so this one was shot at the tennis court right next to Catfish’s house in Ohio. After we shot his photo for the calendar he wanted me to quickly snap a photo of a different trick just so he could see what it looked like. Well, it looks like this… Photo by Fat.
What have you observed in the similarities/differences in the mentality towards riding between flatlanders and other riders?
There is no doubt in my mind that flatlanders are a different breed of humans than other riders. To be honest, even though I consider myself a flatlander, and even though some of my closest friends are flatlanders, I still give them the stereotype as “weirdos”. But here’s the thing… I’m okay with that. I don’t mind being different than most. I respect the differences in people. I just wish more people could see, appreciate, and respect the differences in each other. To me it seems like a lot of other riders are much more close-minded than flatland riders. I think it takes a certain personality type to want to ride by yourself for hours and hours, trying the same thing over and over just for the personal satisfaction of knowing that “you did it”. But really, I haven’t looked into it enough to pinpoint how exactly flatland riders are different by nature. I don’t think it’s that important… I’ll leave that to the psychologists, haha. I just know that I tend to fit in a little better with the flatland riders. But at the end of the day, and when you look at the big picture, we are all riding freestyle bikes for the same reason.
Monaco/Terry
Without this guy, I would not be so close to the flatland community. I owe a lot to him…my closest friend, Terry Adams. Photo by Christian Van Hanja in Monaco.
I’ve noticed that a lot of the photos you shoot in BMX are very creative and well thought out. Where do you draw your inspiration from?
I kind of think the style of flatland photos I’m known for comes from not really knowing any better when I started shooting them. The first time I really shot a bunch of flatland photos was for Terry Adams’ Ride UK interview back in early 2006. If I remember correctly, before I approached him about the interview I had heard about him riding in rain, so I had that in the back of my mind as a starting point. Then we talked about all the wild ideas we wanted to do and cranked out the interview over the course of ten days of shooting. And after that article was finished, I felt like I couldn’t ever shoot flatland photos in a parking lot or I’d be taking a step backwards. So with Terry, it’s almost like we set the bar so high with each other that we have to keep stepping it up. But with other riders you can’t make them ride on the edge of a 14-story rooftop or through fire, so you have to make do with what you have. So then my inspiration came from my love for travelling and seeing beautiful things in different places. By taking a compelling backdrop that paints a picture of a unique location, and adding a rider doing a trick I feel like I’m taking two of the things I love the most and blending them together. Personal and artistic styles change and evolve, but right now the flatland photos I like to make simply composed ones with a good trick, a cool body position of the rider, great colors, and a background that makes you feel like you want to travel to that location.
Chase Gouin Panama
This photo was shot at the same time and location as Chase Gouin’s photo that was used for the month of February in the 2010 Flatland Calendar at some old war fort ruins in Panama. Photo by Fat.
The Flatland Calendar is a great idea. What was the process behind taking it from an idea to making it a reality?
There are two main parts to making it happen—getting the photos, the legwork. After that, putting it together is fun and easy. The calendar can’t happen if there aren’t photos to fill the pages. The first calendar filled up quick because I had more than two years of images to pull from. But since I used all my good flatland photos last year, I only had about 10 months worth of new photos to work from this year, which wasn’t nearly enough. Luckily a handful of awesome photographers from different countries contributed their photos because they were stoked to be a part of the calendar. So once I had enough photos, it was on to the legwork—lots of planning and figuring out every possible scenario of how everything can logistically work, and lots and lots of emails. In addition to the photos, the calendar can’t happen without the co-sponsors that pay for the calendar to be printed. It is much easier to get the calendar paid for up front from sponsors than to rely on people purchasing the calendar. Plus, I love free stuff, so I like to be able to give riders something like this for free. So I have to write a lot of emails and proposals to companies to encourage them to be a part of the project. Hopefully next year the economy will be better and getting the sponsors lined up won’t be such a difficult chore.
Are you able to tell us any new ideas for projects you are working on that may be related to Flatland?
Earlier this year I had been having meetings with the people responsible for Dew Tour about somehow introducing flatland in 2010 at a stop of the Tour. It’s way too early to mention anything specific about it, but I was working on it. However, everything got so busy for me with my work load and travel schedule that I didn’t keep on it. That’s definitely on my list of things to do right now—to get back with those people and keep trying to make a push for it. Of course I’d love to do another calendar for 2011, so hopefully that will pan out. I want to get a new flatland bike, enter a few beginner contests next year, and make a short little edit of myself riding. I’m just waiting for the right opportunity to get a dialed bike… Aside from that, I just want to try to get to as many contests as possible next year—hopefully a few overseas ones. Oh, and I’ll probably help out with Jomopro again next year too.
Thanks and final words?
This interview is long enough already, and everyone deserves some kind of thanks, so thank you all…
Long Beach Self Portrait
Self portrait in my city: Long Beach, California. (Shot just after shooting Chad Johnston’s photo for the 2010 Flatland Calendar.)