Words and Photos – Scott Pattenden

I was recently in Norway shooting with a vert skater called Mats Hatlem, but luckily managed to find myself linking up with Ola Selsjord during the week to shoot some photos.

Tucked away on a quiet dockyard opposite a clutch of mountains is an indoor skatepark in Drammen, a small city about 40km away from Norway’s capital, Oslo. I’d never met Ola, but out of nowhere, I found myself shooting pictures with him…BMX is good like that.
I was a little to nervy for the photo shoot to be honest. being fairly new to this, it was a totally new experience for me, meeting up with a foreign rider for the first time in a different country, so I didn’t really know what to expect. He arrived a little late, but did so with a reassuring smile on his face, within 5 minutes of meeting Ola, he you could tell he was a chilled guy and was super enthusiastic about shooting some photos… So it was on.

He warmed up for a little bit, and I went about scouting angles and ideas for shots. We only really had two decent features to shoot on in the quiet little park, which was a steep but small spine, and an old small jump box with a seriously low ceiling. It was a limited set-up but with Ola being mainly a park rider, we thought we would try get the best we could out of the spine & box…

I was stoked off the whole shoot and overall experience. Ola was super easy to work with and made everything he threw down for the camera look stupidly easy. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of the Norwegian shredder leading up to, and over the new year, especially after just pulling what we believe to be the first flair 540 No Hander! Check it out if you haven’t done so already!

Keep up to date with Ola using the usual suspects:
youtube.com/olabmx
facebook.com/olaselsjord
Instagram : olaselsjordbmx