15 Shots. Recently Mike T Schmitt made me aware of a thing called “sprocket photography”. Basically shooting full bleed on rolls of 35mm. I already had a medium format camera, my Hasselblad 503CX, but had to order a 35mm adapter to shoot on that 120mm camera. The results were what you see in this video and the links within this post. This made me remember why I love shooting film in the first place. Thanks for being here and we’ll see you soon. 🙂
Riders: Johnathan Ball, Marco Marquez, Deacon Wong, & Oscar Lopez
Right before I left Los Angeles I started riding with JBALL, Oscar & Marco a lot. It was great having them around to get me back into riding my FGFS bike again. Here’s a montage of the 4 of us that could better be summarized as a video of JBALL with us making quick guest appearances along the way. Thanks for being here, reading this and joining us on this journey through life. We appreciate you.
15 Shots. Recently Mike T Schmitt made me aware of a thing called “sprocket photography. Basically shooting full bleed on rolls of 35mm. I already had a medium format camera, my Hasselblad 503CX, but had to order a 35mm adapter to shoot on that 120mm camera. The results were what you see both above and below. This made me remember why I love shooting film in the first place.
Out of a roll of 36 exposures I was able to get 15 shots. These are them. Every last one of them. Again why I love shooting film. Instead of capturing a thousand photos, then coming home and having to sort through everything, you shoot one shot. The shot. Then move on to the next one. It’s incredibly liberating not knowing if you got what you wanted. If it was captured correctly, exposed correctly, in focus, out of focus. It quickly becomes more about the act of doing, than the end result. But when the end result looks like this, who can argue that only shooting 15 shots is such a terrible idea. Haha. I’m sure there are tons of apps out there that try to imitate this effect, but you can’t beat the real feel of film. Riders: Johnathan Ball, Deacon Wong, Marco Marquez, Oscar Lopez
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https://wheeltalk.org/2020/06/29/fgfs-los-angeles-keeping-distanceOnce a week. It’s been good to get back on the FGFS bike again and even better to have a social distance session with the boys. The photo of JBALL hitting a table top is one of my favorite shots from the day. He brought a film video camera with him and we got a quick clip with that at our first spot of the day. The banks. After that it was off to the local high school to ride some surprisingly beautiful and uncapped set of ledges. If only more schools were built like that.
I’m looking forward to dropping off the roll of 35mm I shot on my 120mm Hasselblad 503cx. I just got a spool adapter recently and have never shot full bleed 35mm. It’ll be fun to see how the sprocket style film photos turn out. I took some top down photos / video through the view finder to help give you an idea of what we got. Stay tuned for video clips from this day as well as a solo part of Marco Marquez we recently finished piecing together.
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Building up your bike is almost as fun as riding it. The rad part about fixed gear is how different everyone’s bike is. Each build is a passion project assembled piece by piece. The best part about fixed gear is that it doesn’t take much to put one together. Master Bike Co & RUFF Bike Co are both rider owned / operated brands that still produce FGFS parts. So if you’re looking to build up a bike or need something new, that’s your best place to start.
My bars are clearly shifted back, Marco’s wheels are more square than circle, JBall’s bike is solid as a rock, Oscars bike has throwback vibes and Deacon’s freshly painted MASTER frame had a sparkle attribute that won over the hearts of the judges. The judge being me, personal opinion of course, but Deacon had the illest whip.
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Johnathan Ball came by the house just before the sun went down, so we went out and filmed for an hour. Or however long the sun would let us. Either way, we hope you enjoy this three and a half minute video we filmed in under an hour. Check out more music I’ve been making and keep your eyes peeled for Power Hour V2 featuring just JBALL on his FGFS setup at this same spot.
Song: SLUMWORM – I’m throwing a house party and everyone is invited
Date: December 14th 2019
After I got home, I flipped through the camera and thought to myself… I should have taken way more photos. JBALL, Deacon, Tadashi, Nico & I met up in Santa Monica to ride a couple schools that MTS put us in touch with. I need to start making a map of spots out here because things aren’t as close as we’re used to. LA is a big place and it doesn’t really seem to have an edge until you hit the ocean. It just sprawls out infinitely. It seems like most spots are only accessible via automobile. That’s somewhat of an exaggeration, but you’re definitely going to have to drive to meet up with your friends. That’s what these dudes did. Thanks again for coming over to our neck of the woods to ride before Tadashi flew back home. We’ll have to make it a slumber party next time.
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Johnathan Ball, better known as JBALL has been riding fixed gear since… well you’ll have to ask him how long exactly, but a long time. Let’s just say that. He’s unreal on a FGFS bike and even better on 700c x 28c tires. From throwing bar spins off rooftops to spinning fish n’ chips till your mind melts, JBALL makes it look easy.
The morning of the second Tracklocross race here in Los Angeles, JBALL hit me up wanting to ride bikes. After shooting photos of the race, I met up with him in downtown and rode around for a couple hours stacking a ton of clips in a short amount of time. CLICK HERE to check out the video we made entitled “Second Nature”.
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