Behind the Lens: Deano Berm Blast

By James Lissimore

With all the hype right now about Dean Wilson and his much anticipated supercross debut for the mighty Monster Energy Pro Circuit Kawasaki team I thought I'd dig back into my archives and find my favorite shot of little Deano.

The whole Wilson family has always been really great to me. I spent two weeks at their home in San Jacinto in 2008 and couldn't have been treated better. It's always a treat to spend time with them whenever our path's cross.

This image was taken in 2007. I spent most of the winter staying with Howie Spencer in an apartment he was renting in Riverside. Deano had just made the full time move to big bikes and was riding for Team Green but wasn't yet on the full fledged Extreme Team Green team. We met up a few times and went out in the hills to shoot photos. Nuevo, where this was shot, was half way between Riverside and the Wilson's place in San Jacinto and had a bunch of good freeriding areas and corner tracks burned into the hills. When it would rain in So Cal and the local tracks would turn into a mess, we would head out to these spots and pound motos.

Dean Wilson blows up a berm in Nuevo, California during January of 2007

Filmer Felix Trepanier had come out in the morning to get some shots for his video, Invasion 2, but it ended up being pretty cloudy and it was hard for him to get much in the way of good shots as Dean hit a jump and pitched it sideways for the cameras. After Felix left, we headed down the road to this super roughed out sand track. The bumps were massive at this place! One good thing about overcast days is the light is really even and consistent so it works well for close up shots as long as you keep the sky out of the frame. Deano started hitting this sand berm a few times and on this frame he just absolutely obliterated it. With the form and aggression he was showing you could tell he was one of those special riders that was going to go far in the sport. It's been awesome to watch him go from winning everything in Canada, to solid rides at the big US amateur races, to winning all the big amateur races to signing with the most prestigious team in the Lites class. I for one can't wait to see what he can do once the gate drops for the East SX Lites series. Here's hoping we'll see Canada's first Supercross winner shortly!

Here's the camera specs for the photographers out there:

Shot with a Nikon D2x with a 300mm lens, 1/1250@f5.6 – iso 400

This is my second favorite shot of Deano. Nice banana! Haha