Busy Busy Busy

It's been a long week. Last monday I finished my last final and jumped on a Greyhound in the afternoon that was headed to Whistler. My buddy Adam, a friend I met in school, lives there and invited me up to stay and shred. My bus driver was the worst bus driver I have ever had the displeasure of seeing. He was miss-shifting every gear shift and finally in downtown Vancouver, about 15 minutes after leaving the Greyhound station he stalled and killed the bus. They put a new battery in and off we were, only to breakdown again 30 minutes later. This time they had to call in a new bus. Now up until this point, I just figured the bus's transmition was shot. There's no way they would hire a driver that sucked this bad. So we get on the new bus, and right from the start it feels the same as the last one. Miss-shifting and grinding gears, almost stalling out on a few steep hills that can be found along the Sea to Sky highway. I finally make it to Whistler after 5 hours. The trip normally takes 2. It was cold as shit in Whistler, and the mountain didn't have much snow. I got frostbite on my nose the last day riding. It happened halfway down the hill on the first run of the day. My flights home were cancelled because of an epic snowstorm that hit Vancouver. I spent the night in the airport and got home 26 hours later, luckily being able to catch seats by waiting on stand by for both my flight out of Van. and the connection to St. Louis. What's funny is in all these situations I wasn't pissed at all. The best thing you can do in is laugh. These aren't serious situations, no harm will come out of them. They are only inconviences, and most of the time funny ones at that. People at the airport were screaming at the workers behind the check in counters. Now how is that going to help anything? When it was my turn I joked with them and had a pretty funny conversation with the guy working at the counter. He was stoked on my attitude, and did his best at finding a way to get me home ASAP. As luck would have it, I made it home a full 24 hours sooner thanks to him. Everyone just needs to chill out and laugh at not only the good times in life, but the times where shit hits the fan. It's usually those times that make for the best stories.

Alex decided to sleep on the sand in between these huge rocks the first night camping on the beach. We were unsure of how far up the tides went, but he decided to do it anyway. I woke up before him and went to go see if he had been washed away. He hadn't, as I found him still sleeping. I shot a photo from ground level, but then decided I needed to figure out a way to get the ocean in the photo too. It was a major part of the scene, and without it part of the story would be missing. So I climbed up on a huge rock above where Alex was sleeping and found this angle. He started to stir as I was organzing the composition in the view finder, so I waited until he woke up and fired off a frame.

Creep much?

Busy Busy Busy

It's been a long week. Last monday I finished my last final and jumped on a Greyhound in the afternoon that was headed to Whistler. My buddy Adam, a friend I met in school, lives there and invited me up to stay and shred.

My bus driver was the worst bus driver I have ever had the displeasure of seeing. He was miss-shifting every gear shift and finally in downtown Vancouver, about 15 minutes after leaving the Greyhound station he stalled and killed the bus. They put a new battery in and off we were, only to breakdown again 30 minutes later. This time they had to call in a new bus. Now up until this point, I just figured the bus's transmition was shot. There's no way they would hire a driver that sucked this bad.

So we get on the new bus, and right from the start it feels the same as the last one. Miss-shifting and grinding gears, almost stalling out on a few steep hills that can be found along the Sea to Sky highway.

I finally make it to Whistler after 5 hours. The trip normally takes 2.

It was cold as shit in Whistler, and the mountain didn't have much snow. I got frostbite on my nose the last day riding. It happened halfway down the hill on the first run of the day.

My flights home were cancelled because of an epic snowstorm that hit Vancouver. I spent the night in the airport and got home 26 hours later, luckily being able to catch seats by waiting on stand by for both my flight out of Van. and the connection to St. Louis.

What's funny is in all these situations I wasn't pissed at all. The best thing you can do in is laugh. These aren't serious situations, no harm will come out of them. They are only inconviences, and most of the time funny ones at that. People at the airport were screaming at the workers behind the check in counters. Now how is that going to help anything? When it was my turn I joked with them and had a pretty funny conversation with the guy working at the counter. He was stoked on my attitude, and did his best at finding a way to get me home ASAP. As luck would have it, I made it home a full 24 hours sooner thanks to him.

Everyone just needs to chill out and laugh at not only the good times in life, but the times where shit hits the fan. It's usually those times that make for the best stories.

Alex decided to sleep on the sand in between these huge rocks the first night camping on the beach. We were unsure of how far up the tides went, but he decided to do it anyway. I woke up before him and went to go see if he had been washed away. He hadn't, as I found him still sleeping. I shot a photo from ground level, but then decided I needed to figure out a way to get the ocean in the photo too. It was a major part of the scene, and without it part of the story would be missing. So I climbed up on a huge rock above where Alex was sleeping and found this angle. He started to stir as I was organzing the composition in the view finder, so I waited until he woke up and fired off a frame.

Creep much?

Thanksgiving Downtown

I went to downtown St. Louis yesterday with Jordan, Nathan Brown, and a kid I had never met before named Jesse. He hit up a couple spots in the city, then came back out and hit up a picnic table at a local school about 10 minutes away from my house. Here's two shots I got out of it. First is a back 180 melon and the second is a nosegrind that wasn't landed...yet.

Getting kicked out is awesome

So me and Lavanchy have been planning on shooting a switch ollie photo at Olympiad for awhile now and today we finally headed out at sunset to accomplish it. Well, shit started going wrong. As soon as we get there, we see that there is one car in the way of the runway, and two more parked right in the way of the angle I was planning on shooting. Oh well, he started warming up and I started setting up anyway. Then, once I have my flash out and I'm setting it on the tripod some lady comes out of the building and says that they have been informed to call the police if they see anybody skating. We say sweet, she goes inside, and I keep setting up and Lavanchy is warming up with fs 180s or something. I go find a good angle shooting from a constuction site with my 70-300mm and I get kicked out by some dude working there. I ask if I can just stand there and shoot photos and he replied, "No, cause you guys always fuck with our plywood." Well shit, fuck you guy, I said "I'm not gunna fuck with anything but whatever superman." I find another angle and Lavanchy starts trying the switch ollie and then some lady from ANOTHER building comes out and kicks us out. Lavanchy tries two more times and then we leave to go to our backup spot, Crestview Middle School. There's a sweet gap over some 7 stair handrail so as I'm setting up I realize that the ambient light is getting low and I could probably shoot some film on my AE-1 with 1/60th flash sync and full frame fish. WOOT, so I finished off a roll of Provia 100F thats been in that camera since mid-October and dropped it off after the sesh. Once Lavanchy died trying back 180s over the gap him, Devin, and Lysp seshed some 3 stair for fun. Here's a photo of Lavanch doing a boneless. I get my film back on wednesday, if I get anything good I'll throw it up here. I have high hopes too, so that usually is always followed with shitty photos. I <3 photography...

Old shot from summer

I came across an old shot I had from this past summer of Jordan doing a smith at Northwest Highschool. I recropped it and I like it alot better now. Man, I can see the benefits of 6x6 format sometimes. Sometimes there is too much deadspace on 2:3 ratio.

2 different days

So thursday night I had the creative itch so I grabbed a glass from the kitchen cabinet, my cutting board, and headed up to my room to shoot some photos of water drops. I had two binders standing up holding the cutting board across them with my flash under the cutting board lighting the glass up from the bottom. I had my lava lamp light lighting up the background.

Today, I was shooting photos at one of the best skate spots I've been to in a long time with Lavanchy, Berk, and Devin. It was soom pool in a statepark about 15 minutes away (which I drove to and from with my gas light on). Shit started going wrong once we got there though. My flash was slowly dying because I hadn't charged the batteries in it the night before. And then some dude who was riding bikes with his family decided to go for the gold citizen of the day medal. He comes up asking if we are supposed to be in there and all this stuff. So I ask him if he works there and he replies no. So then I ask why do you care? I mean seriously, this dude took time out of his little family bike ride to come pester some kids at the bottom of an 11 foot pool who weren't bothering anybody. Well, in the end he left saying he was going to go the the park ranger station and tell them we were trespassing in their pool. We left quickly.

I <3 fake film borders

Haha, I want a MF camera bad. I was bored procrastinating working out so I threw the nollie shuv picture I took of Lavanchy into Photoshop and cropped it to 6x6 format and threw on a Hassy border...cause that's what all the pimps do.

Saturday Night

Saturday night after dinner I noticed everything outside was really pinkish looking. I look outside and BAM, dope sunset. I book inside, ask my dad if I can borrow his car, and grab my photo gear. I don't even take time to change into real clothes, so I head out in my Spongebob pajama pants and slippers. While driving on 5th street I decided that the Days Inn would be a sweet spot to shoot some photos at. Some kids walked by while I was shooting and said the car was awesome. I could've lied and told them it was mine and I had twin turbos in it, but I'm a pussy so I just said it was my dad's car. I don't know if they would've believed it was mine anyway...considering what I was wearing.

Today, after waking up at 10:30 and laying in bed unable to bring myself to get up until 12:10, I went skating. Lavanchy IMed me asking if I wanted to go and shoot photos. Shit yes I was down, so I loaded my car up with my gear and headed to Jack in the Box to meet up with Lavanchy and Devin and some kid I hadn't met before who's name was Lisp? I don't know. Anyway, we headed to Rock Gap. After thousands of tries, Devin finally landed a kickflip, complete with a clean catch right on the bolts. Lavanchy threw down a nollie shuv. I didn't do a good job of showing the whole nollie part in the photos I took though, shoot me. Lisp had to be home at 3, so we left around 3:30 to head back home. It was nice shooting skate again, I'm gunna miss it once winter hits 100%.