Plan B in Long Beach

On a recent trip to California, I was on my way to meet up with a model in Long Beach when I passed a guy doing tricks on his bike in a large parking lot. I thought how fun that would be to shoot.

About thirty minutes later — and after deciding the model was a no-show — I was back at that parking lot. With a now free afternoon. I thought I would go see if that biker would let me take his picture. When I returned, two more bikers had joined. The original biker was just leaving and one of the new ones wasn’t warm to the idea, but the third biker was Joel Moody — BMX rider, actor, and film maker — who was friendly and down to let me photograph him.

An Evolution

It went something like this:

“Here, this is a good trick for the camera,” Joel says.

He does a couple tricks. I show him how it looks in camera.

“I’m going to remove my shirt. It will look better”

He does more tricks.

“Let me get my hair down. It will show the movement better.”

Finding a stranger who is up for that type of on-the-spot collaboration is gold.

Photographed April 2021, Long Beach, CA