Jeff Zielinski Facts

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• August 11 2004
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George Dossantos had an extended Bio in issue 54 that included a photo of a no-footed toothpick on a seriously mangled fence.It was so bent and twisted that the only part you could still stall was right above an upright. This meant that George had to be really precise with his toothpicks, but precision really isn’t a problem for George. I never got photo credit for George’s bio, and I was pretty bummed since they were some of the best photos I had shot up to that point.

There’s a Volume ad in issue 57 with Will Taubin doing an icepick grind on a rail next to wall. A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, but there’s no way that a photo could convey how horrible that spot smelled from the homeless people who use the spot as a toilet.

Ride 62 was the first time I shot a poster (Free Agent/Chris Duncan). I flew down to Florida for three days to shoot it, and everything went incredibly smooth. The only stressful part was hoping that the photos would come out right because I was relatively inexperienced at the time and I knew Losey was counting on me.

Bruce Crisman won gold in Street at the 2001 X Games and a few days later when we were both at Woodward, Bruce asked if I’d shoot a photo for a Diamondback ad. The ad was going to hype up Bruce’s win and show him riding street with the medal on. The ad ran in issue 68 and the ribbon is visible, but his hand blocked the actual medal. I think a lot of people never got the gist of it.

Ride 72 had a feature titled “Look Over the Fence” about pool riding, and it contained a sequence of Brian Martyn doing a really far armpit air. The caption mentioned that it took us a few hours to drain that pool, but what it neglected to mention was that it took that long even with eight people and a generator-powered pump.

Ralph Sinisi had an interview in issue 47 and when Jared Souney came out to the East Coast to shoot it I was just starting to really focus on shooting BMX photos. I wanted to ask him 100 questions, but I also didn’t want to piss him off, so although it was really difficult at times, I tried to keep the questions to a minimal. I ended up tagging along as the filmer and kept my mouth shut. Also worth mentioning is that all the photos in Ralph’s interview where shot in one night and one city.

There’s a BASE Brooklyn ad in Ride 51 featuring Butcher, Mark Choquette, and Luc-e. I shot the photos of Butcher and Luc-e and I was really nervous because I had never met Butcher before and I might’ve met Luc-e once before, but I don’t remember. Anyway, that was my first opportunity to shoot photos with “established” pro riders and of course I didn’t want to mess up or piss them off or anything like that. It was both an exciting and stressful experience for me.

There’s a sequence of the Gonz jumping onto a roof off a kicker ramp in issue 58. A guy named Evil did a barspin onto the roof during the same session, but from the angle I was shooting from and the timing of the motordrive, the sequence didn’t show it at all.

There’s a Duffs Joe Tiseo memorial ad in issue 68 with Joe doing a no footed can-can over a hip. The spot was in a park that was always swarmed with little kids, even during school hours. To get the shot, Joe and I had to get there at 8am and sit in traffic bound for New York City.

In issue 73 there’s an interview with Ben Snowden about how he used the Thomas Guide to find spots. In one of the riding photos he’s jumping a roof gap-I guess you could call it that. The spot was in the middle of downtown LA and the set-up was a pedestrian bridge going over the traffic with a ledge on top. Ben rode along the narrow ledge (maybe a little wider than a foot) and then gapped off it onto a roof. The gap itself wasn’t too big, but what concerned me was Ben riding across that ledge 30 feet above bumper-to-bumper traffic. All of those people sitting in their cars could see us up there, especially when I was setting up my flashes and testing them. It was such a sketchy scene and I still don’t know how a cop never saw us-or what the heell we would’ve said if a cop did stop.There’s a sequence of Dusty Horton barspinning into a backwards grind in the First Mega Tour article in Ride 83 which caused a bit of a ruckus. Apparently Dusty had a sticker on his helmet, which should be visible in the photo from the angle it was shot at, but it wasn’t visible due to motion blur, grainy film, or the flash overexposing it. But the sticker’s absence made a few individuals point their fingers and concoct conspiracy theories about how the magazine PhotoShopped out the sticker. This obviously wasn’t the case and the whole ordeal was completely ridiculous.

There’s a photo of Chris Arriaga doing a curved wallride across two doors on a tiled building. It was already around 11pm when we got there and we had to sit around and wait for another hour until a cleaning crew left, and then we had to unscrew a garbage can that would’ve blocked Chris in the photo. After all of that I still had about an hour and a half drive back home.

While I was in Coventry, England, for the Backyard Jam the hotel lost power for a day or two and there weren’t any backup lights in the stairwells so they were pitch black. I seriously could’ve stood in there all day waiting for my eyes to adjust and I still wouldn’t have been able to see my hand in front of my face. It was so dangerous walking down those steps-and there were no elevators!