Eyeballs - Aaron Zwaal

Kenzo de Witte hop barspin. This was shot during the 2013 WAOJ trip to Barcelona that Kenzo and I went on. I was constantly telling him that I wanted a simple hop barspin on a scenic spot, when we found this wall near a spot I knew it had to happen here. One flash opposed to the sun, settings were good first try and after a couple of simple hops this barspin turned out just the way we wanted. A little while after Roy contacted me for using this image as a WAOJ poster and it’s hanging above my desk as we speak.

Kadeem Eiland toboggan. Last year in February Kadeem was in town for a jam at the local indoor skatepark. Before that we went to shoot an interview for BMXRider magazine and a poster for Dante distro. The jam happened while Simple Session was going on and Kadeem really wanted to see Garret Reynolds ride, so we quickly went to this bank spot around the corner. I took my place, Kadeem did a toboggan, this was the result and we went back in. As quick as it went I am stoked on how this turned out.

Janek Wentzky downside whip. Janek bought my old camera back in 2013 and we went into town a bit and shot this downside whip on probably the most known spot in town. Funny thing is that there are no skateboarders allowed because of the sound, but riding is allowed.

Casper Verheijen disaster. Casper is a local skater in Nijmegen with a huge motivation to find and try and produce as much as possible. When he saw this weird transition piece he really wanted to do something with it and when we went on a random evening the sun was settling nicely. He got it done when the golden hour was in full effect and lit up the factory in the back real lovely.

Stuart Gibson wall tap. Stuart and I have a thing that when we go to shoot photos together it’s going to be a mission. We have been on a roof of a metro station, next to highways, and this spot was more of the same. Located next to a highway where no BMX rider had gone before. We were there for quite a while and when the sun was setting in we thought a wall tap would work real good because of the transparency of the Plexiglass.

BMX Cruise. In October last year I had an photo exhibition where I decided to do two series, one during daylight and one during the night. This was one for daylight, placed a clamp with tripod head on my peg which resulted having my camera with fisheye super close to the spokes which was really scary but it worked out in the end.

Long shutters. For school we always have to have personal projects in which you choose your subjects yourself. I had to get a 9stop neutral density filter for these. During the winter days I went quite often to this beach along The Waal river to shoot long exposures. The images were shot with a Mamiya RB67 with Fuji Acros100 because the film stays quite sensitive to light even while having the lens open for a couple minutes.

Anthony Perrin Polaroid portrait. Back in June last year I was invited to photograph the Federal Bikes team for a couple days for their lookbook. On the side I tried to shoot Polaroid photos of all their riders. Once I got home I bleached the negatives of the Fuji Polaroids which turned out like this, quite artsy, quite cool.

Janneau Rademaker tireslide. I remember when we shot this tireslide through a puddle it rained quite a lot that week. Janneau and me just had to shoot something though first we went to this indoor flat rail to shoot a crankarm grind, which resulted in a double page in FreedomBMX. This picture was used for the night series of the photo exhibition I had last year.

Jack Nieraeth 180. Last year I organized a street jam in Nijmegen, the Netherlands which had quite the turn out with guys from Belgium and Germany coming to my town. Jack Nieraeth and his homie Ermiyas decided to crash at my place so they could explore Nijmegen a little better and I showed them the not so usual spots.

Pim Scheers toboggan. Pim Scheers is a rider hailing from the southwest of the Netherlands and on this occasion he tagged along with a couple more riders. Janos Baars and I had to shoot a poster on this spot for Dante Distro, but first I wanted Pim to do a couple of toboggans because of the light. It’s such a weird quarter though because it’s slanted at an angle as well. Pim made it work after a few tries and went the highest I’ve ever seen anybody go there. Janos flipped out of it afterwards for the poster.

Reflections. Recently I got a large format 4x5 camera. One of the first things I wanted to do with it was flip the back 180degrees in the middle of a double exposure which makes for quite the interesting "reflections." My school teacher suggested it’d be cool to take a double exposure, with an exposure from both sides of the river, and having one exposure with the back flipped which resulted in this weird picture.

Rok Simsic wallride. Rok is a rider from Slovenia who found his way to Nijmegen a year or so ago. He stayed for a while with his girlfriend, did odd jobs and rode and filmed a lot. He has such an unique style with crankflip barspins, and real goofy rocket manual stuff. On a rainy evening I really wanted to produce something with him and the only location available was this abandoned dirt spot under the bridge, which is mostly used by bums and people walking their dogs nowadays. This bank to wall is to say the least far from smooth, but Rok didn’t mind at all and made it work!

Janos Baars whopper. Last year I got this medium format field camera which worked quite well with this shot of Janos Baars' hop whip on a 7 story parking lot. Shot on Kodak Tri-X.

Joeri Veul barspin. Joeri Veul visited my town on such a cold day and at the afternoon we went to this perfect uprail. It's such an unreal spot and it can be quite a bust because of the shops there. Joeri and I made it work before the cops showed up though.

Roy van Kempen downside whip. I tagged along with Roy van Kempen to the Dub Jam in Liverpool in 2012. We stayed a long weekend and when the jam was done we went to cruise for a day with Ben Lewis and he showed us this cool spot, perfect for a downside tailwhip. The photo turned into a poster for a national supermarket chain which was pretty funny.

Rutger Pauw eurotable. I visited Red Bull photographer Rutger sometime last year he showed me around a bit and these nipples looked really cool for a photo. It was really messy though with it being in a dark area and shards of glass everywhere. I looked up and there were these nets under the bridge and a couple of dead pigeons decided it’d be nice and peaceful to chill above me as well. Rutger gave me some tips on lightning that were helpful so cheers about that though!

Souf air. One of Arnhem’s oldest locals is Souf and he is still as crazy as I first met him. We were having a session on what is probably Arnhem’s most famous spot because the sides of the tunnel are transitioned but the middle part is not used too often. Souf as a local didn’t mind doing a couple airs for a photo and I think it works quite well with the shadow.

Thijs Vervaeck 360. Thijs owns a BMX shop in Belgium called The Bridge BMX Shop, which he does with all his heart and provides loads of good things for the scene. He was visiting me with Jan and Kenzo last year and stayed for two days. The first day was super productive and we stayed out for a real long time and finished it with pizza and a BMX DVD. On the 2nd day we were out quite early and ready to go. As fate happened Thijs dropped his bag into the car with his keys and we had nowhere to go but wait for a sketchy german dude to unlock the car which took 4 hours in total. We were all kinda bummed but tried to make the most of it, we ended the day at this little pimple. Thijs, known for his amazing 180/360 style, did a couple of 360’s and I couldn’t help but take a photo of it.

Stijn Staal half cab. I visited Stijn during the weekend of my birthday in 2012. It started with such bad luck with him having such a large bruise on his butt and breaking stembolts. While I was in the train to Rotterdam, after switching 2 of my stembolts with his, it worked but after that he fell on a feeble 180 on a down ledge which hurt him pretty badly. The day after we went easy with breakfast and decided to go to the first spot and meet up with Don and the homies to film and shoot. At the first spot Stijn wanted to do this rail hop to smith on an outledge, which took him some bitch runs and literally a mental battle with himself, after he got that smooth as butter he did it a couple more times. Afterwards we went to this famous 10stair which he wanted to half cab for a long time. Without much hesitation it worked, one and done deal, this sequence turned into a WAOJ poster as well.

Cruise. For school we had to take a weekly picture with the same theme in it. I wanted something with bicycle riding, which resulted in 7 pictures in this same style but every single one with his own background.

View from Barcelona. Thijs from The Bridge BMX invited me for a 10 day trip with his crew to Barcelona. One day we got kicked out of quite a lot of spots and decided to say fuck it and hike to the biggest mountain we could see. It was a lot of effort but once up in the mountain it was the most amazing view. We really enjoyed it and stayed up in there for like two hours. This was shot with a Hasselblad 500CM with 80mm and Kodak Porta 400.

Nicky van der Veen barspin. Nicky and I visited Emile Bouwman in Barcelona in September. Emile worked at a city bikes/tour guide thing and Nicky and I thought it would be a good idea to end the summer with a little trip. When we saw this little roof we knew we needed to do something on it. Think this really shows the atmosphere of Barcelona with his warmth and awesome architecture. Originally published in BMXrider magazine.

Dutch photographer Aaron Zwaal is someone whose work I've taken a keen interest in recent years. Just barely into his mid-twenties Aaron's vision, control of light, and variety of imagery is highly impressive. Those who appreciate great BMX photography should be glad that when forced to decide between a car and a camera, Aaron made the choice he did. Now feast your eyeballs on fine work produced on and off a bike, from his small hometown in the Netherlands and across Europe.

Where do you reside? How old are you?

I've been living my whole life in the oldest town of the Netherlands. Nijmegen is a nice and cosy town on the east of the Netherlands, like ten kilometers from the German border. As we speak I have been on this little globe for 24 years.

How long have you been riding?

At first I was skating til I was 16, but I wanted a BMX bike because my dad used to live in the middle of nowhere, so I wanted a bike to jump some makeshift ramps and little dirt jumps. That's nine years ago. Time goes fast!

When did you start shooting photos?

I have always tried shooting and filming a bit with friends when we were riding and documenting most of the stuff, but I got my first DSLR(Canon 400D) in 2008. I could choose between a drivers license and a DSLR and I chose the latter, especially since me and my mom were going to New York that year and I wanted to photograph a lot over there as well. Slowly I started shooting more and more and when I broke my elbow at the end of that year, I started slowing down a little bit, and it made me shoot even more.

Influences on your work from the BMX world?

Jeff Z, Vince Perraud, George Marshall, that one guy that shoots for DIG called Devin Feil haha! Also I really like checking pictures on Instagram even though it can't beat print but it's an easy quick fix for pictures.

Photographic inspirations outside of BMX?

I don't really look at too much other non-BMX photographers to be honest, but other then that I really cruise around a lot and find most of my idea's for things from that. My school(photo-academy) also gives me inspiration with assignments that I need to do but I can give my own twist on them which is pretty cool and a really good learning experience.

Current camera equipment inventory?

Phew that's going to be a long list starting with digital:

Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 50mm f1.4
Canon 24-105mm f4
Canon 85mm f1.8
Tokina Fisheye 10-17mm
Fuji x100

Film starting from big to small:

Wista 4x5 VX large format camera
90mm-120mm-150mm for the Wista
Hasselblad 500CM
80mm f2.8 and 150mm f4 for the Hasselblad
Homemade pinhole with a medium format 6x7 back and an F-stop around f220
Konica Big mini 35mm compact for snapshots
And some 35mm SLR's that were given to me

Lighting:

3 Yongnuo 560's triggered by Cactus V5's

I know you just picked up a 4x5 recently. Have you had a chance to shoot any riding with it yet?

I did with Janos Baars last week! He is living in Nijmegen because of university but I have known him for quite a while now.

When I contacted him on a random Monday he wanted to come to Nijmegen in the evening because he wanted to study that day but the sun was shining and he said fuck it. At first we went to ride some street and I couldn't really shoot 4x5 because; for one he was doing quite deadman stuff I didn't want to risk messing it up and secondly It's hard to get film shots published especially black and white.

After the street session we went to the local park and shot some stuff there but it was mostly test shots really to see how it'd work and I cannot wait to shoot some good stuff with it!

Do you have a favorite camera?

I've really starting to like to use my 4x5 because it takes time to use it and it brings the quality up way more instead of just snapping away, especially when you gotta load your own film and you can only fit 6 sheets in a tank for developing. Looking through the ground glass with a loupe is also really amazing! It feels real good to use it. The Hasselblad is also really sick to use and the shutter sounds the best. My 5DMk2 is just convenient for commercial stuff but the sync speeds are messed up though.

What drives you to explore such a wide variety of photographic processes and techniques?

I guess I kinda got bored with the old SD/CF card into the computer and wanted something more out of it. When I have something in my mind then I really got to try it because otherwise I can't get it out of my head, same with medium format and then 4x5. I really like trying out stuff and finding out stuff the hard way.

How'd you capture the "Cruise" series?
It'd take all the fun away if I would tell you that haha!

Any upcoming projects?

I recently joined the exclusive list of staff photographers at BMXRider.de a German BMX Magazine that still does print. Super honoured on that and can't wait to produce more stuff for them! I have been really busy with school taking up a huge amount of my photography which isn't quite a bad thing as I also get a lot of motivation and diversity from it. Other than that I don't really have too much on the pipeline so far and most things happen to me quite spontaneously.

aaronzwaal.com

instagram.com/aaronzwaal