Julz Lynn / Fire

Some photographers see what is there and capture it. Others see things in their mind’s eye…  and set out to recreate it. Arto seems to be one of the latter. He has amazing ability and his photographs really stand out. About a year ago, he talked to me about a fashion photo shoot that he was doing at his pool. He was going to light the pool on fire and shoot a photograph of Julz Lynn doing a frontside air through the flames. We had done something similar with Lance Mountain a year or two ago at Ridiculous and I had helped during that shoot. I love fire and gasoline. There wasn’t too much arm-twisting involved. “Pour gasoline around the coping and set it on fire with a Zippo? Sure…  Count me in!” It was a cold night. The crew had set up lights, smoke machines… we had it all.

The inherent problem in getting a particular photograph like the one Arto envisioned was timing. I had to get the gasoline lit and the fire had to wrap around the entire lip as Julz Lynn dropped in and pulled a frontside air. Sometimes the flames dwindled behind her, and other times, the flames were too high…  We tried several times. We used a leaf blower to keep the smoke billowing across the shallow end to mask the house behind the pool. Gasoline. Fire. Skateboarding. Symbiosis.

The results are pretty wonderful. Julz Lynn was the epic skateboarder that she is, no clothing was harmed and nothing burned that wasn’t supposed to burn. Good stuff. Thanks to Arto Saari and MRZ for the images. Thanks to Julz Lynn for ripping… skate- Ozzie