Every week we have one winner and one loser in the Firing Squad. Well, unless spiders take over, and then sometimes we have two winners, but you get the point. Anyway, we try to keep the photographer names out of the battles for fairness purposes, and while it rarely works, at least we try, right? When a photo loses, we offer every photographer the option to come out of anonymity and tell the story of their shot. Some people don’t bother, but in the case of this week’s loser (who was last week’s winner) he really got after it, even including some outtakes. Here’s how the above shot came to be with photographer Adam Chrabąszcz.

I’ve made this shot with a Polish Rome and Spy rider Michał Greń (he was then riding for Forum.) We’ve made it during winter in January 2009, we had a very good winter for jibbing and city shots that time. One day after shooting a wallride (fought in YoBeat, sick fight with over 500 votes, so close, but lost by 23), I was dropping off Michal to his home and we decided to check the dirt bike park, which was just a block away from his house. It was late in the night so we just checked out the place and decided to shoot the next day during sunset.

It was quite a good session, the weather was great with a clear sky, and it was something other than jibbing, drops and wallrides, that we used to do the previous days. Michal is a very good rider and can do anything a photographer wants, just ideal for shooting fast photo sessions. We’ve done some jumps and some board presses. Everything had to go smooth and super fast, due to the quick sunset.

This particular photo was chosen to be submitted, since it is one of my most faved photographs on flickr, so I wanted to see how it would get around at Yobeat. The trick is pretty simple, but the main idea was to catch the purple sky, that matched great with Michal’s outfit. It was all about color on this one. I wanted to have the rider in the middle of the frame, with the vingette from the fisheye lens making him appear as in a spotlight, just like in a theater. All though it might look as a single flash setup, I’ve used two strobes (Sunpaks 555 triggered with Pocket Wizards) for lighting the rider and a 1/100 exposure for getting the ambient light from the sun. The buildings in the background just add a more industrial feel to it. The camera behind the shot was a Canon 40d equipped with a Tokina 10-17 fisheye lens wide open at f3.5.

I feel that this is a photo that gives more to the photographers audience than the riders, it’s a lesson to remember and I’ll post some more action packed, hard-trick photos next time to please the riders a bit more

For a preview check my showcase at http://showcase.chrabaszcz.pl, my blog for the recent shots at http://adam.chrabaszcz.pl, my flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamchrabaszcz and one of the biggest polish freestyle sites at http://vimo.pl , which I, Marek Ogień (ultra yobeat champion) and some other great polish photographers create.

I’m an extreme sports photographer based in Poland. I shoot mostly snowboard and freeski in the winter and FMX, kite, wake and skate when there’s no snow.