North Park BMX Jam
Above: Ben Hartman , alley opp double peg grind transfer. View all the photos.
Jesse McCollum, Ivy Melvin, Justin Mann and friends organized one hell of a BMX contest at the Pleasant Valley Skatepark in North Kansas City last night. Hundreds of kids from around the midwest met up for an evening winning some loot thanks to Red Bull. The contest format was awesome. Old Man Kenny, Phil Wasson, and Fredonia Dave were given something like $4,000 in “funny money” to hand out to riders that pulled sick tricks. At the end of the night, eveyone exchanged the “funny money” for real money at the Red Bull booth. I’m not sure who took home the most loot, but a handful of riders took home enough for one-months rent.
Highlights from the evening included Tom Dugan going super high on everything in his path. Dennis McCoy did an abubaca on a 3.5-inch wide piece of wood. It was great see lots of old friends on familiar turf.
I also got a chance to meet some new friends, all doing equally amazing things on and off their bikes. Jeremy Schutte, a bmxer and art director for a major creative agency in Kansas City, blogs about BMX culture at bmxroots.com. He posted a great overview of the night’s antics. Trevor Hawkins was shooting video for Red Bull. Peep his site at butterfilms.com
The BMX scene in Kansas City has always been an melting pot of old and new. From the BMX Brigade in the early 80’s to all the teenage brakeless whippers, Kansas City is a place where the grasshopper and the crooked grind get along. If you don’t ride, than you won’t understand.
My Three Favorite Online Magazines
Launched in February 2007, Monocle is a global briefing covering international affairs, business, culture and design. Headquartered in London with bureaux in Tokyo, Sydney, Zürich and New York, Monocle appears 10 times a year in print and is updated constantly at monocle.com. Developed for an international audience hungry for information across a variety of sectors, Monocle’s team of award-winning editors and correspondents have been drawn from The New York Times, The Independent on Sunday, the BBC, CBC and a host of other news and current affairs outlets.
Visit: Monocle.com
Portfolio.com strives to capture the intrigue, excitement, and power that attract people to the business world. We pair award-winning reporters with renowned photographers, videographers, and artists to bring the day’s most compelling business stories to life. It’s a unique vantage point for an online business site: Rather than chase every breaking news item, we handpick the stories that will really make an impact - and go deep. We introduce you to the players, recount the backstories, and share the long-term implications. It’s a big-picture site, for big-picture thinkers.
Visit: Portfolio.com
A well-designed blog-style website that offers creatives tips and tools for running a successful business.
Visit: Freelanceswitch.com
High Def Web Visuals Coming Soon
With the fall season comes my favorite holiday: Halloween. Like last year, in which I documented party-goers, I plan to photograph the occasion and present it online using a new multimedia platform. Think of it as a full screen streaming HD flash video player. Warning, boring tech talk to follow below.
In August, Adobe released a beta version of its new flash player, code named MovieStar. The player will now support Quicktime H.264 compression, the latest and greatest way to squeeze really large video files into extremely small file sizes with really amazing quality. First off, if you haven’t done it yet, download the new Flash Player 9 from Adobe. After you have downloaded the new player, click here to watch an example HD video in full screen mode. YouTube, Google Video, and all the major networks will all likely introduce all of their programming with a full screen view option very soon. If an Average Joe like myself can post it to his blog, than so can the heavyweights.
In the future, online readers will expect full screen visuals just like they expect RSS feeds today. Are big media companies implimenting long-term strategies that embrace the emerging trend of big visuals? Companies with workflows that output low-resolution images will need to adapt to presenting big online visuals. Our readers will demand it.
On a side note, if you don’t hear from me much in the upcoming weeks, know that I haven’t kicked the bucket. After my regular 9-5, I’ll be working on a handful of magazine photo projects. If anyone is available to assist on Oct. 20, please let me know via email.
Duluth Minnesota
If you ever have an opportunity to visit Duluth, Minnesota, do it. It’s quite an amazing little city on Lake Superior. During much of the twentieth century, the city was an industrial port town, with a cement plant, nail mill, wire mills, and the U.S. Steel plant. The population surged well above 100,000 residents, many of Finnish descent. But due to foreign competition, the steel plant closed in 1971. More closures soon followed, leaving an industrial complex scattered along the banks of Lake Superior.
Today, many local businesses have began the process of reclaiming some of these relics of the past in the name of tourism. Needless to say, Duluth is one of the most visually unique American cities that I have ever visited.
