Riding the Pipeline © Jay Goodrich

I had dinner with friend and fellow photographer Jim Goldstein in San Francisco earlier this week and the conversation covered the full spectrum of subjects. Kids, blogs, work, play, friends, future workshops, everything had a go at one point or another. It was a wonderful evening. During our discussions Jim told me about a blog post he did on HDR titled, “Why I Hate HDR: Photo Technology Porn.” And within a second, the synapses, began firing. Ah, porn…wait sorry, different thought. Actually, that is what came to mind first, but in the split-second, official review of the tape, I was actually thinking about something another friend of mine said to me while I was in Eagle, Colorado shooting an article for Dirt Rag Magazine. Bike Porn. “So we need to go out and get you some photos for that article that will make the bike porn fools drool over. Not a problem can do.”

Now before you all go to your bedrooms or bathrooms (showers more specifically), bike porn is not having sex on a bike. It’s having sex with a bike. No, kidding, it actually refers to watching crazy videos of crazy riders doing crazy shit on their bikes. You sit their jaw agape, bit of drool hanging out, much like you would if you were…watching porn. You long for the locations, the ability to ride the lines, and/or the actual bikes the athletes are on. It is the simplest of marketing concepts. Create something that is sleek, shiny, and desirable and you will sell millions. True porn has it, most sport industries have it, hell even camera manufacturers have it. So here, with a little sneak as to what is coming (no pun intended) is one of the 5400 images that I shot while working on my upcoming article. A little teaser. An image of myself riding a trail named Pipeline. Yes, I am in fact riding the pipeline. An homage to me, a self-indulgent artist. Now it’s time for a cold shower. This is just the beginning…of the porn.

Thank you Jim and Chris for enlightening my thought processes a little more than yesterday.

The Boneyard at Sunset, Eagle, CO ©jay goodrich

I have been really busy working for commercial clients, which has kept me at the computer screen for what seems like years now, even though it has only been a couple of weeks. A few days ago I got to escape to shoot the sunset about 5 miles from my house in an area where my wife Heather and I usually mountain bike. The trail is named The Boneyard, primarily, for the amount of deer carcasses that the hunters leave along it during the fall hunting season. We have found almost full skeletons there! It is a pretty morbid place, but the mountain biking is some of the best that I have ever ridden. It is an amazing one hour loop, with one of the fastest downhills around. As you near the top of the ride, the trail meanders through a pinyon pine forest. The Colorado Pinyon is a slow growing tree similar to the bristle cone pine, the difference being, that it grows at much lower and arid locations. Since the pinyon is such a slow growing tree, its trunks and branches take on a wildly gnarled shape. I decided to put one of the biggest specimens in the foreground of my composition to offset the soft and silkly feel of the meadow grasses. The clouds illuminated just as I arrived to allow me to get this shot. e: Canon 1D Mark III, 16-35mm f2.8 II lens, Gitzo carbon fiber tripod, Kirk Ballhead. p: Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop.