Hello winter. (Pt2.)

After locking my keys in the car in Birch Run and eating a cardboard tasting burger from BurgerKing I made it to Scott's w/ all my camera gear. He really put it down that day getting 3 tricks in 1 1/2 rolls of film. Props Scott.

Scott Nichols (1/15, @F16, ISO200)

Hello winter. (Pt1.)

Well, even though this weather is real good for December, some people already prepared for those winter snow days. Scott Nichols is one of them. He has been ripping his new mini ramp pretty hard lately. Check the proper pivot to fakie.

Scott Nichols (1/30, @F11, ISO100)

Joe B.

I saw Joe B riding his bike down Kersley Street in Flint wearing this Jesters hat and just knew I had to photograph him. He originally asked for $2 but I only had $1. After talking with him for a moment he took the dollar and I took his photo. I really do wish I had another dollar or two on me, because we all know that a single dollar isn't going to get much. Maybe if I see him down there again tomorrow I'll try and hook him up a little better.

Joe B (1/125, @F1.8, ISO100)

6:06PM

Once in a while I just get an itch to set up some lights and take some portrait shots. I really enjoy when my girlfriend is around when I get these itches; She makes a wonderful subject. This portrait (as well as a couple others) made me late for work by 6 minutes that day.

Lydia (1/60, @F1.8, ISO400)

Holga.

When I dropped off this roll of film yesterday morning I tried to explain to them that no matter what the negatives look like, make prints of them and I'll check them out later. I knew they'd be super confused when they saw the negatives and of course, they were. They didn't charge me for developing or printing on these. With muliple exposures on one frame, and random extra space between each frame I don't blame them for thinking that they screwed up, but in reality it was just me testing out my new Holga camera with 35mm film instead of 120. Good times.

Self Portrait (1/100, @F8, ISO400)

"Cheese!!!"

When I asked this guy if I could photograph him, his face was straight as could be; Just as I wanted. He was real. A split second before I snapped the shutter he smiled and said "CHEESE!!!". I kind of laughed and talked w/ him for a minute and asked if I could take one more before we went our own separate ways. Sure enough, a split second before he does it again. "CHEESE!!!". I laughed again and he went on w/ his business and I went on w/ mine.

Unknown (1/60, @F1.8, ISO400)

West Coasts meets Midwest.

I remember on the night Tanner was leaving for the West Coast like it was yesterday. I met up with him at his house where he was still packing all his stuff w/ Sarena while Dave was chillin' in the corner. We went for Taco Bell on Fenton road and got our order totally messed up, nothing was right. We still had some good laughs though.
Now he's enjoying life in Long Beach; 4 blocks from the ocean. He has a nice apartment. I can't wait to hang w/ him again.

Tanner Shay (1/125, @F2.8, ISO200)

No I will not buy you cigarettes.

Whenever I talk to my buddy Nate Dell I never refer to him as just Nate. Not even Nathan. It's always been, and always will be Nate Dell. He's probably one of the only Nates I even talk to anymore so there's no need for the last name, but it's always there. If I call his house or his girlfriend's phone, "Is Nate Dell around?". Whoever answers normally giggles.

Nate Dell (1/1000, @F1.8, ISO400)

Friendly portraits.

I recently asked my good friend Joe if I could shoot his photograph so I can help build a portfolio up of more stuff other than skateboarding. He was more than happy to be a team player. Unfortunately when we went out to my garage to shoot the photos, we ran into a little bit of a key problem and couldn't get in. So instead of having a ton of room and being able to set up multiple lights, I was reduced to having 2 and a little bit of crampness. Anyways, while I was shooting, I decided to get a couple shots of my beautiful girlfriend as well.

Joe (1/30, @F1.8, ISO400)

Joe (1/60, @F1.8, ISO400)Lydia (1/30, @F1.8, ISO400)Lydia (1/30, @F1.8, ISO400)

Winter '05

This group of photos is of the band Chiodos when they had played a show in Fenton (or near there) in winter 2005 (I believe). I remember standing in line in the snow and slush for 30 minutes before my friend Korey and I started talking to random people to cut ahead. It finally worked, and I'm glad we did because we later found out that the show had sold out.

Chiodos (F1.8, ISO1600)

Stargazer.

While driving yesterday I saw this old run down truck in an empty parking lot and noticed there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I thought this would look fantastic with some star streaks. So I went back later on last night and sure enough, there still wasn't a cloud in the sky. I may go back tonight with some color film and see how that works out, but I'm not 100% sure. Oh yeah, be on the look out for a couple more portraits from Matt K coming up soon.

Stars (15minutes, @F5.6, ISO400)

Down for life.

I met Matt K at a late night sesh at a bank off of Linden Road earlier this winter/spring. Since then, we've been in pretty close contact as far as skateboarding goes. If the weather is good, I would say 95% of the time I'm getting a call from Matt sometime throughout the day to see if I want to skate somewhere. In the past 7 or so months I think we've became pretty good friends and so when I got my latest photo assignment and found out it was portraits, Matt K was the first person to pop into my head. I mean, how many 30 year old skateboarders do you know personally that can still stomp down a perfect 360 flip? Yeah, not many. I'm pretty sure he can beat me in SKATE too. Regardless. Check out the tattoo of the Flint CB Tower and Weather Ball. Notice the skateboards w/ the Indy logo? Yeah. Can you say, "Down for life"? Yeah, you're damn right.

Matt K (1/250, @F1.8, ISO400)

A hazy shade of winter.

Today it looked beautiful outside, but then when you remember that you're in Michigan, you remember that looks can be deceiving. Very deceiving. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but that wind would hit you and go straight to the bone. The snow will be here soon, so you guys better get out there while you still can. We all know parks aren't fun for shooting photos.

Joey Mintline (1/250, @F8, ISO400)

Billy Poore (1/250, @F8, ISO400)

Billy Poore (1/250, @F8, ISO400)

Nice shades.

My buddy Dave bought a pair of Krew sunglasses a while back and he was so pumped on them. I believe they cost around $40-45 or something from the local skateshop, but he probably got a little bit of a discount. Either way, he was so pumped on them for a minute, then one night while skating he came up to my car to talk to me about something and I guess he didn't know they had fell out of his pocket. Next thing I know I'm pulling away and hearing the sound of $40 sunglasses crush under my car. Dave was bummed but thought it was funny. I'm glad he found it funny and wasn't mad. This story has nothing to do w/ these photos, because this is not Dave nor are they the $40 Krew sunglasses.

Joey Mintline (1/125, @F1.8/2.8, ISO400)

Amphitheater.

I believe this is the amphitheater in downtown Chicago off of Michigan Ave, but to be honest, I'm not really sure. I had seen a photo that Shawn Bush had taken here before and thought "Wow, that's pretty amazing. I want my own." So here it is. 10 seconds of time trapped in a 1x1 1/2 inch negative.

(10seconds, @F8, ISO400)

Chicago2k6

This is a photo of a subway car passing as we were waiting for the Red Line to take us to Wicker Park in Chicago. I shot this photo here because I've been listening to a lot of Thursday lately and they have a called Division Street which I've been really into, and because that subway was going to Division Street, I thought it was only the right thing to do.

(10 seconds, @F16, ISO400)

I really like Flint.

I loaded up another roll of film yesterday to shoot some skateboarding and was only able to fire off about 8 frames, and at $6 a roll of film, I wasn't about to let the rest go to waste. So instead I headed downtown to shoot more portraits. These few are what I got.

Baby Gotta Live (1/60, @F1.8, ISO400)

Calvin (1/250, @F1.8, ISO400)

Flint Skyline (10 seconds, @F11, ISO400)

I'm not going to lie, Baby Gotta Live kind of scared me. Had it not been mid-day I would not have asked to shoot his portrait. He was wearing a long coat, and a hoodie w/ the hood up and who knows what was all in there. I had shot this one this morning, but actually saw him walking around yesterday while out and about but didn't want to approach him because he had his hood up and it was getting late. After I took his photo, he said "Can Baby Gotta Live get a dolla? Tryin' to hook a brotha up with a cup of coffe".

Calvin approached me first while I was metering off my hand said "You ain't taken my picture, are you?" and I replied with no. He then asked for some change and I asked to a photo of him. We both got what we wanted. I believe I saw him this morning and almost asked to take his photo again, forgetting that I had already taken it yesterday.

This last photo here is of Flint from the Harrison St. parking garage. I was on my way home from getting coffee w/ the girlfriend and dropping my dad off some coffee and was pretty tired and I knew if I took the e-way I'd get even more tired. Instead I took Saginaw St all the way from Grand Blanc into Mt Morris. Going through Flint I decided to fire off a couple more photos here at the parking garage over looking Flint.

Assignments.

It's kind of weird to think, that I've captured 1/2000th of a second and 1/1000th of a second of Billy Poore's life in these 2 photographs. When he's doing the trick, he doesn't know what he looks like and as it turns out, I was there to capture that one pivotal moment in time when he knows if he's going to commit and land the trick or bonk out and try to land it.

Billy Poore (1/2000, @F4, ISO100)

Billy Poore (1/1000, @F8, ISO100)

Flint Portraits.

I walked around downtown today for almost 2 hours asking to take people's photos. Some agreed and some didn't. I'm pretty happy w/ the people that did. Here's just 3 of the bunch that I thought really stood out, not just because of the photo, but because of the actual person. There is so much character.

David (1/250, @F1.8, ISO200)

Willie (1/500, @F1.8, ISO200)

Larry Kitchen (1/250, @F1.8, ISO200)

The first man was sitting on a bench when I asked to take his photo. I was surprised to find out that he couldn't speak, so I had to right down everything I wanted to tell him. After he let me take his picture, he then wrote on his peice of paper, "Can I borrow a dollar?".

The second man pictured, Willie, I believe I had just caught him after lunch. He was walking w/ another man that pretended I wasn't even there, but Willie was a real cheerful guy and was happy to let me take his photograph.

Larry Kitchen was one of the few that actually wrote out his last name on the peice of paper w/ all the names. He was a big man that kind of seemed lost, as I had seen him walking earlier as well. When I asked if I could photograph him, he replied w/ "Yeah, sure man. What, what do you want me to do? You want me to pose?" and I snapped the photo and said, "Nope, that's it. All over".

This was actually pretty fun and I think I'm going to get in the habit of trying to this more often. I wonder if these people are sitting around right now telling their friends or family how a random college student came up to them today and asked to take their photo.

Peaceful.

I believe this is the first non-skateboard photo I've shot in months and hopfully now that I have to shoot college photo assignments, I'll be posting more. I'm just not much a fan of a photograph unless it's of skateboarding (or related to it in some way) or unless it's a portrait. Whatever though. Hopfully Sunday I'll go downtown and shoot photos of people and develope the photos Monday.

(1Minute, @F5.6, ISO 200)

Hello rain.

All day Friday we were fighting off the rain, but I really wanted a photo because of the sky. Luckly it had stopped raining just enough to snatch up a nosegrind. Billy was doing them all day so he got it a couple times just to be safe.

Billy Poore (1/250,@ F8, ISO200)

Film developing is so fun!

I had to shoot some film for an assignment in my photography class for college so I figured, what better subject than what I choose to surround myself w/ almost everyday? Anyways, I developed these shots last Wednesday and was bummed because they weren't done drying in time for me to take them home that day. I got them yesterday during class and I feel it was worth the wait. I'm real pumped on how they turned out.

Billy Poore (1/500, @F16, ISO400)

Billy Poore (1/500, @F16, ISO400)

Billy Poore & Jayson Skelton (1/500, @F16, ISO400)

Taking care of business.

Joey called me today saying he wanted to get a trick. So I pick him up, we go a warm up spot and he's feeling it so we go to the actual spot. Joey was on his game so good today that he got 2 angles for footage and he got a photo. That's some baller status right there. I just wish I had set up a flash or used 1/250 instead of 1/500.

Joey Mintline (1/500, @F2.8, ISO200)

Polaroid fun.

Polaroids are so fun. I almost broke down the other day and bought more film, but then I realized I'd rather spend my money on developing real (35mm) film instead. Anyways, here's a polaroid from last summer (2005). Good times. Probably the best summer ever.

LBC2k6

This summer I went and stayed w/ my best friend, Tanner, over in Long Beach California for about 10 days. We did a ton of skating and managed to get some filming done as well as got some nice photos. I had never gotten a photo of a palm tree so I figured I might as well take a polaroid of one!

Digital Days.

One day, early this year, I remember driving home from somewhere and going past a contruction site and seeing all these fullpipes and just freaking out. Fullpipes? In Mt Morris? Whaaaa?!! Yeah, I was so hyped. So I call up my buddy Dave from Grand Blanc because he's basically my only friend that can skate tranny and see if he wants to get this photo. Of course he's down, so he makes the 30 minute drive all the way out here, just to find out these things are super small. I think they measured 6 foot even. Now then, if you can do the math; Dave is about 5 foot 11 inches tall and he's standing on a 2-3 inch skateboard. That's just over 6 feet so this thing was mega cramped. He wasn't able to bust any kickflip to fakies, but but he did get pretty high on this pump to fakie. Check the Haunted shirt from back in 2001.

Dave Petrowski (1/200, @F2.8, ISO100)

The Ledge Spot.

The Ledge spot is a place that a couple of my friends and I built over the summer, and it's quickly become the skatespot to go to for a ton of Mid-Michigan skateboarders. It's kind of cool knowing that people drive 45minutes to an hour and a half, to skate something you built. It's also kind of a bummer because now, there is almost always 12+ random people there. It's almost like a skatepark now. Oh well. You win some. You lose some.

Joey Mintline (1/250, @F8, ISO400)

Billy Poore (1/500, @F5.6, ISO400)

I'm at it again.

Well, I couldn't get motivated enough to actually come up w/ my own design and code an entire site, so I'm using the good old BlogSpot again. This'll work for a while. Look for updates coming pretty often for the first week or so as I try and get up a bunch of old photos from the past 6 months.

Scott Nichols (1/250, @F1.8, ISO400)