Standerd Slides

Subject: Collin Harrington from the cover of Book 1.3
Photo: Joey Meddock

TSQ Location: Book 1.3, Front Cover

I picked off this shot while we did the Intracoastal story in issue in 1.3. I knew going into the trip, I wanted to get a shot with cover potential. I just didn’t know which one of the four riders it was going to be. Collin told me before we left that he knew of a few bridges that were projected to be in our GPS route. After a few bends down the waterway, we came upon a bridge where Chris O’shea and got out of the boat.

There were a few rusty ladder rungs that came down low enough for us to climb up on. Chris O is afraid of heights, so he stopped on the first or second perch he came up to. I kept climbing, one handed (300mm lens and camera in other hand) and inched my way higher to get the angle I wanted on Collin.

As I wrestled around and tried to keep focusing upward, I clipped the lens hood on the ladder. I swore, looked down, and watched it sink into the water below.
That part sucked. It really got my heart racing. After that, I thought to myself “ok this is high enough.”

To this day, I keep shooting that 300mm lens with no lens hood. It’s just my new look I guess with that camera setup.

So before Collin rode, I told him that I had this trick in mind. I wanted him to do it a bunch of times so we could really dial in the angles and distances from where I was standing on the bridge. The first few were a bit to far away and it was tough to clearly see the grab. When he rode back through on the way back down, I would yell at him to wait longer and come closer to me, etc.

The first time back, I missed the shot by just a hair and wasn’t able to get the angle just right. I knew we were close though. I get nervous sometimes when I start to see all the elements of the photo beginning to line up, just how I imagined in my head. To me, it’s like being knocked out.

Right when you are coming back into consciousness, your eyes uncross and you start focusing on the first thing you see or hear while somebody is slapping you in the face. Finally, you can communicate (like that…in a nutshell).

“One more time, Collin! Perfect timing!” I screamed out to him on the pass by. The boat looped around, lined back up and Collin began to cut out toe side. I braced myself against the concrete piller behind me and peered into the view finder. As the boat got closer and closer, Collin would keep getting bigger in the frame. The timing of him edging into the wake was key. On this cover shot, he stalled on his edge, way outside the wake.

Long enough to make me think it was waiting too long.

My adrenaline was pumping as he hit the wake. At the peak of the trick, I pressed the shutter, saw the frame blink twice and immediately knew we got a potential shot. I gave Collin the ‘tap on the head’ as soon as he landed and looked up, signaling we were done.

Seconds later, we see a dude on the dock at the nearby yacht club screaming his lungs out, stomping his feet, and waving hit hat.
I guess he didn’t like melon bs 3’s like we do.

– Meddock