Every time you race, you learn something that you’ll try to do again, and you learn something that you’ll try to never do again. If the same logic is applied to skateboarding competition photo shoots, my two take-away items are:

1. Always have two photographers because there are regular-footed and goofy-footed skaters and 50% of the tricks are going to involve the skater having his back to you.
2. Don’t spray-and-pray (take pictures on high-speed continuous mode) because, in a competition, skaters are going to be trying to do their best tricks. As such, they’re going to successfully land 30% of what they try and you’re not going to get that really cool sequence series that you can stitch together.

If I was getting paid for these pictures, I certainly would have brought a second photographer. Here’s the best of the best shots that I got. I’d say 50% or more of the shots I got were ok shots, but the skater was facing the other way. Of the remaining, about 30% showed that the skater clearly wasn’t going to land the trick and so they weren’t worth publishing. Ten percent are similar to the ones that you see below because each skater has their bag of tricks and they keep doing them over and over trying to score points. So, out of all the shots I took, these are what you get.  If you’d like any of these shots in full resolution (about 5X better than what you see here) and without the watermark, let me know. I’ll give you a good price. Promise.