By Brian Bielmann
A few years back, I got a call from Volcom, and they needed me to show up on the west side for a skate project they wanted me to photograph. Now, I rarely shoot skating, but I never turn down a job, and I believe it’s basically like shooting surfing, so I packed my bags and hit the road. I needed to be there in 2 hours to meet them at the harbor. I had no clue what was going to happen.
I showed up, and Clint Moncata had his boat waiting. Jump on and let go, he yells. We had two skaters, Grant Taylor and David Gonsales, three filmers, and Ryan Immegart, the boss from Volcom, who was producing. We headed out to sea, and I asked, So what the hell are we doing? An hour later, we pulled up to a floating ramp out in the middle of the ocean.
Clint had built this ramp and had it in front of his place in Kaneohe. The idea was to shoot the skaters against a beautiful Hawai’i sunset, so Clint had dragged this thing all the way around the island to get the ramp floating in front of the sunset. My buddy Tai Van Dyke had pulled up on a jet ski to shoot it from another angle. I instantly realized how lucky I was to walk into this scenario.
The guys jumped on the ramp and started to slowly work things out. It was an hour before sunset, so they practiced and slowly worked out the ramp, and as the sun got lower and the sky more beautiful, they started going off. The airs got bigger and better. Finally, right before the sun went down, they started the beautiful synchronized skate performance with both of them on opposite sides of the ramp getting airs at the same time, and we got the magic shot on film and stills. It was awesome. Mission accomplished. It was going to be in the new Volcom movie. High fives for beers and joints all around.
It was getting dark and we had to get the ramp into the harbor. New problem, we got word that the DLNR (game wardens) agents were waiting for us. We decided Tai would go in on the ski and try to talk us out of whatever was waiting for us. We just thought we could wing it and nobody would know.
Tai headed in while we started dragging the ramp to the next harbor. We were desperados trying to get the hell out of dodge. Within 10 minutes, we could hear a helicopter coming towards us, and pretty low, one of the filmers yelled to the skaters and said, “Get rid of your pot! Throw it overboard!” No way. “Forget it”, yelled one of them. Very reluctantly, he threw it overboard, and the minute he did that, the chopper turned and flew off in another direction. He was not after us after all, but too late, the pot was gone.
We spent a couple hours dragging the ramp in the darkness and finally made it to the next harbor. We sneaked the damn thing in, parked our boats, ran into our cars, and took off. We could come back for the ramp when the heat cooled off. Thinking we pulled this off because they were not waiting for us, we headed home.
The next morning, we woke to find out that they knew exactly who we were, so they had not bothered to pursue us. They had handed Tai a ticket for no permit and said, We will see you in court in one week. A week later, Tai came back from court and said that Volcom would have to pay a fine of $10,000. It’s safe to say we didn’t see that coming.
The video was a hit, and they used my shot as the poster for the movie. All the video was used in the final scenes of the film. It was called “True To This.” It’s the cost of doing business, I guess. As time goes by, the photo has become quite iconic. Im pretty blessed that I walked into this scenario and got one of the coolest skate shots ever. You just don’t see a shot like this every day.