Shot this one back in the spring of 2008, it’s a mini loading dock at a closed value village over in Gloucester, I was always a fan of this photo, and as per usual, the subject is Aaron.
Hands down one of my favourite photos from the summer. I shot this one at the Gloucester skate park where Chris and I used to skate almost everyday, we used to just ollie over the barriers, we never actually skated them like this. Now the ground there sucks, and its hard to remember how we even had that much fun skating that park. This shot was actually scary, Aaron kept coming really close to smashing me with his board, I was lying down camera in hand. Shot with 4 flashes, 3 of them all together just on the other side of the barrier, and one right behind me, all at full power, and zoomed in.
I shot this photo at little Sams house for Terry because he was too lazy to go do it himself, and figured I might as well shoot it while I’m out there taking Sams photo. Anyways this is Darryl he’s from Ottawa, and although I’ve never seen him skate, apparently he rips with the style of a 20 year old, but he’s only 14 or 15. Color decided not to run his photos in their little gold book special edition mag, but I’m sure he’ll be in some future issues.
I shot this photo of Tomas a few months ago when we first found this spot driving by off Richmond, since then some pretty gnar tricks have gone down on it. This year Toms been stoked on bs tailslides, and so am I, actually they’ve always been one of my favourite tricks, too bad I never learned how to do them.
I got referred to a new Ottawa band called Grace Over Diamonds to do some photos for their press kits, albums and what not. They really liked some work I had done for Visceras Recital a few years ago, and wanted to try to get something similar (actually they asked for the exact same thing). Not wanting to duplicate work, mostly because that’s boring, I had them meet me at this spot that I told them I had checked out. Truth is, I ran out of time and never made it to the location, luckily things sort of fell together and I managed to get some pretty cool photos. Here’s one of the 7 or so, that they chose to use from the sets:
In the spring another photographer named James whom I had met at that Redbull Ice Skating thing I shot last December asked me if he could come and check it out while I shot photos. Aaron, Marty and I met up with him at Dows lake, James invited another friend, and another friend, and soon Aaron and I had a mini entourage. I can’t remember his friends name, but Sarah Dea came too. Anyways here’s a shot of the three of them and Aaron (about to die) at archives (if you’re reading this, you guys never showed me your photos). The photo I shot is to come…
Here’s a photo I shot at the beginning of the summer with Aaron, I shot it with the intention of cropping it, the original has 2 flashes in it or something, smack dab on the left side. This is at Landsdown where I grew up skateboarding behind him on the ledges at the cattle castle, and at the skate park in the Curl-o-Dome (it’s also where I lost my real front teeth). These days you get kicked out even if you’re just skating the parking lot. Times have changed.
Tomas spent the weekend helping some friends put in hardwood floors, 2 years ago he used to do it full time. Apparently after 2 years, 1 weekend of flooring is enough to turn your legs to jelly and make standing up an effort. So Tom grabbed a seat beside me while I shot 1 million photos of Aaron trying to land something. I just got a new D300 and I’m stoked to say that for the 2nd time in 3 days, my 8gb Sandisk Ultra III card got corrupted and it fucked up the middle frame of a sequence of Keith gnarring out. I’m glad his landing was sketchy or I’d feel extra bad. So tomorrow I make the calls to Vistek and Sandisk and Nikon to try and figure out WTF is going on with this.
From another session at McNabb Terry Worona doing a back tail on the up box, he threw a bench under it to make it look steeper, didn’t really work but it was. My photographic skills are lacking. Go check out his blog: http://www.woronaphoto.com . I got a D300 in the mail last week, I’m super stoked, and it’s rained everytime I’ve went to go out, hopefully this week. Happy Canada Day.
Friday at work, I got a call from a friend in Tremblant, that one of our good friends had passed away earlier that morning, I would have posted something earlier, but I left for Cuba the next morning. I met Sean when I joined the snowboard school at Tremblant in 1996, we hit it off immediately and spent many weekends over the next 12 years riding the pipe or snowboard park together. It really hit home and shook me up pretty bad to hear the news. Sean was one of those people that always made you feel welcome and comfortable, and was genuinely interested in what you were up to, he was an awesome skier, a super fun dude, and a great musician. My sympathy goes out to his family and all of our friends throughout the Montreal, Tremblant and Ottawa areas that knew him. RIP buddy, you will be missed.
You can check out his music on his MySpace page.
