Photo: The Skateboard Mag Cover – January 2010
Matt Price

Skater: Ryan Lay
Trick: Backside 50-50 Up
Spot:
Phoenix, Arizona
United States

Footage:

Additional Notes:
Trick done frontside in Enjoi, “Tweak The Beef” (2012).
Matt Price on the cover, from The Deaf Lens’ “TheDeafWord: Matt Price Interview” (2013):
“Run us through the story of your favorite cover.
My favorite cover was the backside 50-50 of Ryan up the wall rail in Phoenix. This was my fourth cover I think, but I had known about the first three before they came out so it wasn’t quite the same feeling when I saw them. Also, the backside 50-50 photo is a perfect example of trying weird stuff and having it work out. We had shot almost every angle of that dumb rail and I couldn’t get anything to look cool. Sometimes it’s hard to light someone against a wall and not have lame shadows. Ryan is tall and that rail wasn’t. After shooting for about an hour of him trying I almost just gave up because everything looked so dumb, but then for some reason I just turned up my ISO to eight hundred and put both flashes behind him and kind of just let the filmer’s lights light him up from the front and shot at 1/250th. That one where he was popping just looked so rad and I was stoked, but I had never had a digi photo run at an ISO over two hundred. I thought there was some sort of rule about that. Turns out I was wrong because just like skating, there are no rules in photography and when I saw that they had put it on the cover of the photo issue I seriously lost my breath for a minute. Being able to get a photo I was so stoked on, and getting one of my best friends from my hometown – who at the time wasn’t even really riding for anyone – on the cover of a photo issue of The Skateboard Mag was probably one of the best feelings I’ve ever had.
I didn’t think the mags wouldn’t run something like this by the photographer or the skater.
I think Swift actually texted me a photo of it before I saw it printed, but the mag has always kept covers a secret. Sometimes circumstances make it so you can’t. We always try and keep it as mellow as we can before it comes out. It’s just a really cool feeling for everyone involved seeing that and finding out for the first time, magazine in hand. Now though with digital subscriptions and social media there’s pretty much no way that can happen unless someone lives on a satellite free planet.”

trickReport.com – covers: The Skateboard Mag, January 2010