I love skate photography. I buy all the photo issues when they come out. I think that skateboard photographers are doing some of the most creative and progressive sports photography right now. I buy those magazines for inspiration.

A lot of the photos in skate mags are done with slave flashes. This one looks like there are two flashes. You can actually see flare from both of them. I have a set of PocketWizard radio slaves I use to fire my flash remotely. Having the flash off the camera allows you to create and control shadows on your subject. And using manual exposure makes it possible to control the background and subject lighting separately. This kind of photo takes a lot of time to set up, and the equipment isn't cheap. But I think you probably agree that it's worth the effort.

Here's one I shot a couple of years ago using my PocketWizards: http://gallery.mtbr.com/showphoto.ph...cat=500&page=5