Kevin Windham is one of the most recognized and respected riders in all of motocross and supercross. When I got a call from helicopter pilot Chris Creamer and invite from filmmaker Taylor Congdon to come shoot the photography of K-dub and production still photos of the Moto 3 movie, I couldn’t think of anything else I’d rather do.
Kevin Windham has been racing for years, has multiple lites (250 2-stroke) titles and has raced with and at time beaten the best in the sport inlucing Jeremy McGrath, (the greatest of all time) Ricky Carmichael, James Stewart and Chad Reed. Kevin lives in Centerville Mississippi, which gets it fair share of rain. We were on standby most of the morning just waiting to see if we could fly. We finally made the trip out to his parents ranch / house and landed the helicopter right next to the supercross track.
The supercross track got a lot of rain. Kevin scouted it out. Check out the aerial photo of the track below. While it dried, we had other filming plans. Kevin Windham is an aviation enthusiast, has his own plane, and of course, knows how to fly. (both on a bike an in an airplane).
Windham literally taxied his plane down the driveway of his parents house to the grass strip.
He had to avoid the fence in the process.
Here’s Kevin Windham flying over his supercross track. This shot shows the hanger where he keeps his plane as well. Air to air aerial photography is always a blast, and also really challenging. See more of the air to air shots below. Also, for the record, it was really hard to narrow these shots down.
This last shot shows the lake on his property. The down time gave us a chance to just hang out with K-Dub. During that time, we swapped stories, including one where Kevin almost accidentally ran over deer with riding lawnmowers. He’s a really down to earth guy, a family man and a country boy.
Well, time to ride, let’s go to the motocross track.
We flew there, K-dub on the other hand just rode there, just rode there, and in Kevin Windham style, rode a wheelie nearly the whole way there. The motocross track is just a mile down the road, a little closer to his house.
For the first half I was taking aerial photography from the helicopter.
This jump to tabletop triple had to be 100+ feet long, and he would nearly go upside down, throwing sick whips and scrubbing speed in the process.
While I wanted to photograph Kevin, my main assignment was to get him and the helicopter in the same shot:
After the outdoor motocross shoot, we headed over to the supercross track. It was ‘dry enough’ to ride. We actually buzzed it with the helicopter to try to dry it up a little bit.
Overall it was a fantastic shoot.
Here is a pic of all of us and Kevin. That his daughter next to him. She was really nice. Actually went and got me a water. They made us feel welcome.
I just got my copy of Moto 3, and it’s pretty sick. Make sure to get your copy over at MotoX cinema.
Also, you’ll see many of these photos in a 2 page spread in the new RacerX magazine.
Photos by Texas motocross photographer and videographer Jonny Carroll
http://dtxphoto.com
http://txaerial.com
http://dtxmedia.com
http://dtxphotography.com
