I figured it would be fun to start a new category to document my “progress” as a budding photographer. So we’ll start with Day 3 with the camera. Going for the artsy leaf shot with a street light in the background. Looks pretty neat to me now, but I’m sure soon enough I’ll learn that it isn’t. Ha.
Oh and yes, he’s an 8 year old kid. Show boat nosegrab. Makes me laugh so hard.
Ollie wants to learn about the camera too. I guess he doesn’t know about the “make old people look younger” filter yet.
Had a totally awesome morning. Watched PJ Ladd own it in SKATE, spent some quality time with India and even snuck in a nap. In the late afternoon Carleigh showed up, we picked up Neil in Broomfield then hit downtown Denver. Traffic was horrible and we ended up kinda on the far side of downtown on the outskirts of where we’ve skated before. We tried to hit a manny pad initially, but an upset tenant wasn’t feeling it. We dorked around at this narrow manny pad and two stair. Well, Neil actually skated it, I posed at it (too narrow for me) and Carleigh tried some flippers on the sidewalk. I was feeling rusty as I haven’t skated for real in awhile. Next up we ended up at chain to ollie. My first few chain ollies were horrible. They felt so out of control and bad. We all ollied it and then started working on more. Carleigh and I tried kickflips, Neil pop shoves. It took a bit, but the men got their moves. Neil backed his up with a 100 foot long manny. Sick. Carleigh came real close to the kickflip. I did it a couple times, but the first one was super slow and sketchy. Second one felt great, but I didn’t have anything on that manny pad. My new trucks felt weird. Neil put down some sick no complies over it too while I got some weak 180s both ways. We left to the weird round brick plaza area. At first Neil and I ollied in the f/s one which I haven’t done before. It’s a little ledge drop into a little bank. Then we turned around and ollied onto the ledge. I got one with ollie up then ollie into the b/s bank. That felt awesome. Carleigh ollied in both b/s and f/s. Neil was trying to ollie out of the bank over the tall ledge. I started trying to ollie over the f/s ledge into the bank. Neil saw it and got it first try and eventually backed it up with a four wheel bonk over the tall ledge which was so sick. I also got the ollie over the ledge into the bank. Hyped on that.A quick kick out of the Wells Fargo C ledge we ended up at a parking garage with crappy gritty concrete that somehow ended up being a blast. I got a couple lines that I was very hyped on. Ollie a curb cut, kickflip up a curb, nose slide a brick planter off a stair. Which was hard because it was sooooo sticky. Also got a kickflip over a curb, 360 flip on flat, manual then front 180 down the 2 stair that came up real quick. So fun! Carleigh put down a bunch of kickflips and tried to manual the long pad. Neil did some good nose manuals and got a good run of pop shove over a curb, 360 no comply (backside), nose manual, one foot off the two stair. We checked out this kinda bank to ledge and rail spot, but Carleigh and Neil left to get some drink while I tried to ollie a little retainer wall. When I finally got it I almost backed it up with a front nose to fakie on the bank to ledge. On the way to meet Neil and Carleigh at Wahoos I hit this little manny pad then ollie over a curb to drop onto a super mellow bank. That took more tries then it should.Those guys ate and we all stocked up on water for the last few minutes of daylight. We hit this weird mellow hip that was soooo hard to skate. It was almost too small to skate it as a hip, but it was good for it. Neil sat it out. Carleigh did some good f/s ollies then spent a long time on kickflips. She eventually landed a good one with a rad surfy ride out. I had given up on ollieing big out of the hip and was trying flippers over it. I came close to b/s flips, but never got a good one. I hucked f/s flips for awhile and never came close. Then I tried a f/s halfcab flip over the hip and was surprised to get it in three tries. After that I started trying 3 flips and after Carleigh put down a pop shove I got her back with the tre bomb. Ha. It felt great though. That was basically the end of the day. Such a great session.I shot the photo above after we were done and got back to the car. Gotta at least try and shoot a photo everyday or I’m never gonna learn this stuff.
My side spasms were subsiding a little, but still painful. Neil, Brian, Cooper, Ollie and I met up with Bernie and Sam at the mellow bank to way too tall ledge because Bernie wanted to do a manny trick in a line (fakie manual fakie flip out). I skated for awhile before chilling out and getting out the new camera. I didn’t skate hard, but took it easy to not make the side worse. I got nose stall to fakie and crook stall. It was cool that Ollie and Cooper came along. They were having fun.
Sam, Bernie and Ollie. My favorite photo of the day. Ollie and Cooper had a lot of fun watching Bernie try his line. F/s flip on flat, fakie manual fakie flip out.
Brian had the funniest quote regarding Neil’s outfit. “So what are you going to wear to church tomorrow now that you wore your church outfit today?” So funny.
Neil church clothes nose manny.
Brian dark side wallride.
As I said before. I gotta lot of learning to do on this photography thing. Cooper no tail ollie taken way to early. But to my credit I’m not sure his tail got any higher then that.
Before you complain about this photo being too early too let the truth be told. He missed the grab. Ha.
More funny faced antics from my kid. When is he gonna grow up and take everything seriously like me?I promise I’ll get better at taking photos. That was day one and I seriously don’t understand Fstop, ISO, etc. It’s totally new to me.
Finally got paid for the VX on Ebay so I rushed off to Mike’s Camera and immediately got the t2i. Stoked. Charged it up and this is the first photo:
I really know NOTHING about photography. F Stop? ISO? Depth of view? I got a lot of learning to do, but I can say that at least I’m starting by putting it in manual mode and learning before I ever use auto.
We are gonna sign a permission slip to let Ollie make a funny face for his school picture.
Clearly he loves making faces right?
Then off to the neighbor’s back yard for the first action shots.
I got a lotta learning to do.
Had the day off work and ran around to several shops selling a couple boards before picking Max up and heading to Longmont to meet Bernie and Sam. We got to a nice looking C ledge, but my side was worse off then I thought. I tried dorking around, but couldn’t skate. We went to a bump to weird ledge nearby where I mostly filmed Bernie, but also tried some pivots to fakie on the bank to crack. That was it for skating until later on when I dropped in on a bank a couple times. It’s been awhile since I’ve had these spasms. Ugh. At least I filmed Max and Bernie get banging manny tricks.
Liz and I bought our Pavement tickets a long time ago when somebody thought that somehow they would sell out the 1st Bank Arena in Broomfield. Yeah right. Months later and the show got moved to a way better venue – The Ogden. The same place that Liz and I had seen Pavement multiple times in the 90s. Perfect. After dropping off our kids at some friends we rolled to the Ogden with our neighbors and got to the venue plenty early.Jenny and Johny were up first. Jenny Lewis is totally awesome, but Jenny and Johny aint so awesome. Decent background opener music, but nothing as good as Jenny’s solo stuff. Luckily they close with a Jenny Lewis song that totally killed it – The Next Messiah.
(sorry for the crappy cell phone photo)The show was sold out so there was lots of hype when Pavement came out. Looking about the same as they did back in the day they played for over two hours and pounded out a well rounded set from all their albums. By the end of the first song No Life Signed Her the show was already worth the $30. Here’s the whole setlist:
I stole this from setlist.fm and it seems accurate. The show seriously ruled. Everything about it was awesome. The lights were a nice touch. They played beyond all of our expectations. They were funny like they used to be, and they seemed to know how to play music better. Sorry you couldn’t make it Brian and sorry my reviews are so boring.
Didn’t have much time since we were leaving for an early show at the Ogden. Pavement! Anyways Ollie and I went over to the school for a bit. It was a pretty weak session. I landed a treflip in skier stance with my front heel on top of my back toes. That’s a new one for me. I like inventing new ways for my style to suck even more than it already does. I started encouraging Ollie to stop pushing mongo more than normal. I even told him that if he finally loses mongo he can get a new complete. He seemed to like that motivation. As we were leaving I tried to kickflip over Florida (on the USA map that’s painted on the ground) and totally ate shit and bashing my left heel into the ground really hard. Ugh ..
Awhile ago Liz said she wanted a nice camera to take photos with. I had just talked to Meta Sam about his camera which he films with too so I was like, whoa, lets sell the video camera and get one of these new DSLRs that does great photos and HD. Win win! Whew! Unfortunately it hasn’t been so easy. My video camera sold on ebay, but the dude has yet to pay. There is a Sony coming out soon called the A55 that seemed amazing until I found out more about the video options (no progressive? seriously sony?). Everyone knows the Canon 7d is the bomb for this, but it’s $800 more then the Sony or the cheaper Canon t2i. So I think I’m probably going with the t2i once I get the money for my video camera. After talking to Meta Sam (7d stud) he agreed that it’s probably not worth the extra $800 anymore and you can build up a better lens collection with that money. So maybe Null will finally go HD and just maybe I can make video clips that are slowed down more than the Lakai intro. Ok, you’re right, that’s not possible.