Rolling Stone, Travis Dove, and Skatopia

Q: How do you get thirteen images in Rolling Stone Magazine as well as an additional online feature and please a photo editor so much that he crows to photo bloggers about you?

A. You make awesome pictures, you work for lots of magazines and newspapers, and you win some awards; essentially, you make yourself very visible. That's what Travis Dove did.

Rolling Stone senior photo editor Sacha Lecca found Dove's work and gave him an assignment for a venue he'd already shot:

"I saw his work (recognized by WorldPress) on the underground skate park, Skatopia, in Rutland, Ohio and was blown away.

We loved the place, and Travis' work, so we sent him back to Skatopia to cover this year's BowlBash, which is an annual summer event complete with hardcore bands, drinking, blowing shit up, and skating. The story is great, and the photos are amazing."

Here's Travis Dove, and here's his bio:

"Travis Dove received his BA from Wake Forest University in 2004. A year later he began freelancing for newspapers in North Carolina's Research Triangle.

Travis is currently working towards a Master's degree in photography at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication and was named the 2007 College Photographer of the Year by the Missouri School of Journalism. Pictures of the Year International, World Press Photo, The National Press Photographers Association and the White House News Photographers Association have also recognized his work. He will be shooting for The Boston Globe in the summer of '08 before moving on to an internship with National Geographic Magazine in the fall."

You don't become successful by being lazy, my friends. Here are some tears from the Skatopia piece:

The road to Skatopia is barely two lanes and often unmarked. It winds past a field of sheep, a white clapboard church (Page Free Will Baptist), a yellow highway-crossing sign showing an Amish buggy instead of a deer. A handmade warning at the top of a steep dirt drive -- "Skatopia Enter at Own Risk!!!" -- lets pilgrims know they have arrived. They come at all hours, most any time of year, from as far away as Argentina, Japan, Finland. The gates are always open.

Brewce Martin began building Skatopia in 1996. Skatopia sits on 88 acres of hilly, forested land in Rutland, Ohio, an Appalachian town with a population of approximately 420, about 20 minutes from the West Virginia state line. Martin has been a skateboarding fanatic since he was a kid. That was in the Seventies; he is 42 now. Martin and his girlfriend, Amber Cavender, revel in the chaos of this year's Bowl Bash, the annual summertime festival that's Skatopia's answer to Woodstock.

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It seems like a dream assignment to be sent to shoot something that you've already found compelling-- when you accompany it with an incredible story (by Mark Binelli) in a National Magazine, it's even better.

Check out my favorite images and text after the jump, and see the whole story online here...

There is no admission fee. (Skaters are generally asked to perform an hour's worth of work.) There are no safety regulations, and in fact, a certain amount of behavior that might be considered "unsafe," like setting things on fire, is encouraged. (Though, as Martin's 22-year-old son, Brandon, points out, "When we burn stuff, it's stuff we have permission to burn. We're not just gonna burn your car. I mean, that has happened here. But we didn't do it.") And Martin adds, "Drinking and driving is allowed up here."

Peter Ager, the 26-year-old singer of North Carolina punk-metal band the Dirty South Revolutionaries, jokingly menaces his drummer's girlfriend with a knife. "That's something I do to get a rouse out of people," says Ager. "We were more than a little tipsy."

A visitor passes out on a parked Impala.

The main barn at Skatopia houses a massive barn, skated here by 18-year-old Josiah Renn. (Last year, Renn lived in a room under the bowl.)

Martin does possess a weird charisma. When Rolling Stone visits Skatopia, at least a half-dozen others are crashing on the property. Several seem perpetually drunk. They all perform various chores for Martin, mostly involving new construction projects. Martin calls them his "minions."

Amazing. Screenplay, please.

See more images at Rolling Stone online.

See more of Dove's work here.