Brian Garson

Happy new year to the people still reading my blog from time to time. A lot of stuff has happened in the past couple of weeks in my life, it seems this time of year I always make life altering decisions. I quit my job at iStudio and moved to Got Corporation to work on CampaignerPro as a .Net Developer; which I’m very excited about. The new office is out in Kanata, I started on Monday of this week and the drive isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be; about 25-30 mins (20 if I bob and weave through traffic).

On the 27th of December I signed a contract to purchase a new home, I bought a 2 story condo in south Ottawa that I’ll be moving in to sometime in September ’08. I’ve also been neglecting my camera, my blog and the rest of my life, it seems I’ve somehow managed to get the flu, get rid of it, then find it again, and have been sick for the better part of the past month.

Here’s a photo of Aaron doing a front board on a rail over on Prince of Whales, we shot this in November or October before it got cold out.

Another one from the archives, actually this wasn’t too too long ago, October 30th actually. We hit up the slater 4 flat 2, then the Britannia rail by the beach. I don’t know of Aaron was saving all his tricks for that night, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him land that many tricks in one night. I also got a sick photo of Seb but I’m saving that one to send in. Here’s another one of Aaron, the most photographed person by me for my blog. Varial flip down the slater 4 flat 2.

Another photo from the summer that never ended up anywhere, this day was actually really productive.. actually most days out with Aaron are. You can see the museum fuzz showing up in the right side of the photo, Aaron actually landed this just in time.

This spot is super hard to skate, basically no run up and the only run up you do have is at a bad angle. Neil was going to 3 flip into the bank but he’s a big pussy, so Aaron did this trick instead. This was beside the pier that we spent the day on, 2 sketchy dudes on skateboards showed up and weirded me out, they told us we shouldn’t skate their after dark anymore because of gangs or something. They ended up being sketchy nice guys; even climbing some palm trees and hooking us up with fresh coconuts. Basically anywhere you go in Miami there’s some guy willing to climb a tree to get you a coconut, either so he can tell you his life story, bum a smoke or ask for a dollar.

Haven’t had a photo of Aaron for a while on the blog, I’ve been slacking. I’ve also forgotten about probably 20-30 photos that I’ve taken this summer that just never ended up anywhere, so I’m working my way through those as well. Tomas found this spot a while back, it’s pretty cool, bank to barrier.

What would a week on my blog be like without a photo of Aaron? And what am I going to do all winter when the streets are full of snow and we’ve already been kicked out of every indoor spot in the city? We shot this tonight, this is the first time I’ve seen Aaron do a polejam, pretty impressed.. I would have done it in 3 tries but I wasn’t feeling it today.. I also updated my blog template to make things look a little better. Basically borrowed Erik Seo’s Blog template that he borrowed from somewhere else.

I actually just went and got some prints made of this photo to hang on my wall because I like it so much. I’m not often happy with a lot of the photos I shoot, but this one I knew while i was shooting it that I’d like it. The skater is none other than Aaron.. of course, and the trick is a front board.

This shot took me so many tries to get just right, I had my flashes placed in specific spots so that the cross beam of the mirror would hide the reflection and Aaron would hide it from the other direction. I had another flash way up above me on a lightstand, and another one to the front and left behind the pillar. I couldn’t see a damn thing because it was at night, and I was determined to get the rimlight behind him. After about 30 or so odd tries, I finally had the camera in the right place to not get any glare in the mirror, and Aaron blocking it at the same time. It’s nice to have someone with enough talent to do the same trick over and over and not get mad at me for effing it up.

This spot in Miami was cool, it’s down near South Beach where the biggest party was happening that weekend. All these hooched up ladies kept hollering at me to take their photos as they were walking by looking at me while I was shooting photos of Tomas long lens from the sidewalk. Anyways Tomas never landed his trick, but Aaron stomped this bump to front board. You’ll notice a fence in the photo, when we showed up a new fence had been put in, so we carefully removed it and put it back afterwards. I’ve always liked this photo, I just sort of forgot about posting it.. stay tuned this week and next I’ll be posting a lot of photos from Miami that I thought might have got a chance in the magazines, but never made it.

It’s that time of the week again, another photo of Aaron doing another trick, this time at Vic Island on the hard to skate step up ledge. Aaron did a couple of these kickflip back tails for me, so I shot a horizontal and a vertical, ended up being vertical FTW. Tried a new post processing with this photo, using this Alien Skin software I recently purchased, it’s pretty rad, lets you pick a film type and it does it’s best to make your photo look like that film. Saves me tweaking around in photoshop and coming up with something lame.. although I might have gone overboard on this one.