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)