Art break.

There's always time for making art!

When it's art break time it's Zakk time. P&S Zine Issue III is well under way, so Zakk came over to brainstorm and sketch so we can keep on doing what we do, do, do until we're done, done, done!

Fabulous!

These friends were formerly two of my favourite college radio hosts back when they graced the air waves on weekday mornings. Now they're two of my favourite photos subjects, because they're fabulous!

Chelsea and Ali

Here we go again.

I mentioned a few years ago that I hadn't attended "Festival" since I was a kid and now that I was raising a kid of my own it was time to return. We've been going every year since then. Here are the highlights from our first day at Festival 2012

The weather was AMAZING this past weekend and the fort was packed! We came to get down...or maybe upside down?

Denmark got a bit crazy with this years ice sculpture entry The Dialogue – Birth of Democracy.

Yes, she's giving birth to the letters that spell "democracy" while her man watches over. It was bold...I approve.

We learned about the revolution and all things old school musket related delivered with an appropriate thick French accent.

Portrait time...

Two Cams are better than one.

Get it? Her name is Cam, my name is Cam. I know... it's genius.

The bonus round...

It's was so warm and wet out that this happened...

...problem solved.

Well sort of. Better warm and wet than cold and wet? Who knows for sure, but it did the trick!

Don't call it a comeback.

Thanks to our friends at Photo Central the DSLR was put back in to action this weekend. I kept all three of the cameras I keep in my bag busy over the past two days while working on various projects. I took a break from skateboarding this weekend (more on that later), but we were back at The Angry Ramp regardless.

Grady Kuly with a nose extension on a make shift extension to 180 out.

Number one coming out of a full cab.

Obviously we were up to more than one quick session of skateboarding this weekend. We'll be back with more on that sooner than later.

No time for skate videos.

From the Bones Brigade videos to Fully Flared I could probably estimate the number of skate videos I've watched in the last twenty five years to be less than fifteen. For whatever the reasons were throughout time I just spent more time doing other things than taking the time to watch others do amazing things in these videos.

I don't regret not prioritizing my time to include endless hours of watching skate videos, but I am aware that I missed some great inspirational moments along the away.

Earlier tonight I happened to be viewing an old episode of Epicly Later'd featuring John Cardiel. If you asked me earlier in the day who John Cardiel was I would have admitted that I had no idea. That's how I spent the early 90's... Doing my own thing while being completely unaware of what was going on elsewhere. Worrying about hitting a skate spot without being beaten down by thugs with 2x4's or baseball bats was far more pressing that who was on the cover of Thrasher Magazine that month etc...

After watching the episode I was inspired to dig up some Kodak negatives shot on my roommate's Hasselblad. A day in the life back at 785 Nassau St. South circa 1991.

Mr. Big Pants/Small Wheels himself Mike D.

The roommate and fellow skateboarder... Billie-Jo

A few of the other roommates.

In hindsight, what I missed the first time around...

Thanks to the power of the internet and Netflix...now I know.

It's a cover up!

If you look back through this week you'll notice it started with a smashed camera and we've been posting B&W photos of ladies since then. Today is no exception. Call it a cover up, call it filler, call it whatever you'd like...this is what he have to offer.

The Nikon DSLR is very close to being fixed (we hope). We'll get back to shooting skateboarding related photos and maybe a pancake breakfast or two soon. In the meantime we're still working from the last batch of film rolls that were processed.

This was from one of the older rolls shot. Sydney and her newborn at 10 days old.

Hotel California

Dear Amanda (and Jordy), We hope you enjoyed your trip to California. Your chinchillas were fed and your dragon was watered. Welcome back to Winnipeg!

Those eyes.

Yesterday I mentioned Chelsea's eyes, today I'm pointing out our friend Cam's beautiful eyes. What can I say... I appreciate a nice set of green eyes!

One could even call it a soft spot.

My hands smell like fixer!

My hand often do smell like fixer, but more than anything it's my favourite line from the Shit Photographers Say video a friend shared with me the other day. It's also a perfect lead in to post some photos from the last few rolls of film that I finally processed from the pile.

You'll notice in this photo that there's a giant obstruction in the upper left corner. That's what happens when you're not paying attention when ripping the tape off of medium format film and a piece of paper falls inside your camera. The obstruction was in every frame of the roll of course.

Moving forward... There's a chance you wouldn't have noticed the obstruction period if I hadn't mentioned it as it's easy to be pulled in by Chelsea's eyes!

That's all you get for now! We'll be posting more from the new batch tomorrow!

Whether it was with your skateboard, your significant other or a box of chocolates, we hope you all had a swell Valentine's day.

Damage Inc.

When someone makes the decision to put their camera equipment between flying skateboards and their own face, one has to take in to account that sooner or later either your face, hands or camera could be damaged while "getting the shot". This is something I have known since day one and I've had my fair share of close calls. Yesterday was one of those days.

The first time I met our friend Brock Anderson he was hucking himself down a set of stairs. So it makes perfect sense to me to see him doing just that for over an hour at our Edge Skatepark rental yesterday. He's well know for his technical ability when it comes to skateboarding and pulling off as many switch tricks as possible it seems. Seriously...he's crazy good.

Here's Brock "warming up".

Here's the split second right before the board shot out on this nose blunt heading straight for my face!

Here's the amazing thing... My camera protected my face! After wiping the paint off of the lens from the skateboard itself I noticed it had separated further than during a previous incident of a similar nature. I looked through the view finder and my heart sank. It was all distorted and messed up. I accepted losing this battle. Upon further investigation I found the inside of my camera body was full of loose parts. My heart sunk further, but it was all part of the job.

Before throwing in the towel I thought it would be worth a trip to the local camera repair shop. A pleasant surprise to me...my Nikon is like a Timex ...I hope! When the loose parts fell out of my camera I never noticed the focus screen fell out on to the floor. Thanks to detective Cliff Heide at the skate park he called with the good news that he found the missing piece! Tonight I go to pick it up and see if we can get ol' faithful back up and running again! Stay tuned!