New Photos: York Skatepark

Couple shots from the skatepark a few days ago... I made a detour through York PA on my way back to pittsburgh from the beach to hit up this park and blade with a couple friends

feedback and crit is always appreciated and if you're on flickr add me up as a contact

full res images at www.flickr.com/photos/davedphoto

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Why do rollerbladers always have to take their shirts off? People already perceive the sport as gay, why make it worse? Not hating, I am just wondering.
 
It looks like you had flashes or amazing natty light, but i think you should go back and shoot at night (if you have flashes). The background is doing nothing to help your image. If flashes were used, the lighting ratio is nice. You could light the ledge and the skater, and maybe some of those background ledges, but keep the building in darkness. Alternatively, shoot with a long focal length but keep the same comp, to gain some dof and blur the building in the background out. They are pretty good though. This applies to the first two.

The third one, in my opinion, would also look better at night. assuming you have two lights, light the quarter closer to you and the front of the guy with one (flash would be behind your location, and light the our left (his right) side with the other. you would have those two shapes plus him, and it would look awesome.

Both still have a nice comp, it's just that the background is not fitting, but you really can't do much about that until night. I don't mean to sound harsh, just voicing my opinion. Now that i've read this over, i made the shots sound really bad. They're not.

and why does everybody hate rollerblading? I skateboard and i think it's cool.
 
i agree on the shooting at night, unfortunately that park is 3 and a half hours away and i just happened to be passing by

i really prefer to shoot around dusk when possible, but when people are doing sweet tricks you just gotta shoot.

i did use 2 off camera flashes, for the 2 with the same angle there was one to camera right level with the skater at full power 85mm zoom. The second was camera left about 8 feet from the skater at 1/2 power 85mm zoom

nikon sb28's fired with elinchrom skyports
 
I'm not much of a photographer, but...
I agree the composition is pretty nice, as well as the lighting, though they could benefit from a dark setting. The biggest thing I find is that they seem boring/not exciting to me. They don't really seem to capture the movement or difficulty (I never got into aggressive, but I'll assume this stuff isn't super easy). To me, it almost looks like some guy just posing on the coping. I just feel like there should somehow be more tension, and perhaps something to draw the focus to the subject a little more (it's probably the building in the background that is drawing my eye away). Given that you couldn't shoot at dusk, maybe having the person take up a little more of the frame, or capture them in a less crouched position(?).Also, I think they could benefit from slightly more saturation.Like I said, I don't really know what I'm talking about, so it's possible I didn't describe what I'm thinking in the appropriate language. You also might chose to disregard what I have said. I do, however, think that as someone without a ton of education/experience relevant to photography, that I can offer some insight into what a more general audience might see, which can be beneficial, considering the majority of people viewing your work know dick all, and will not appreciate a lot of the more subtle or complex things that an expert might comment on (at least they won't explicitly notice them, though they will likely have a positive impact on there overall appreciation). Hope this makes sense.
 
as far as it looking like they are posing, it definately requires an understanding of the tricks and what is considered "good" style in rollerblading to grasp the difficulty/action in the shot. Being crouched down like cory is not only considered to be more stylish than standing up, but for the tricks he is doing and the object he is doing them on being crouched down is necssary in order to balance the trick and remain locked on.

for the framing I always feel it is important to have both the takeoff and the landing included in the shot, as well as maintaining the rule of thirds. If you frame the shot too closely you will cut off either the takeoff or landing and/or will tend to violate the rule of thirds.

and saturation it might just be your monitor or you might LOVE really bright colors, I was actually concerned that they were over-saturated haha so that is most likely a difference in monitor calibration

thanks for the feedback though, I love to hear any criticism that anyone has to say and hopefully you are enlightened by my reasoning for shooting these photos how i did!
 
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