This marks the first summer since I was 15 in which I havn’t had a full time job. The past 4 years I have been juggling shooting, and skating, with full time retail work. While it’s nice to have a steady flow of cash throughout the summer, I have really learned to relax over the summer. Though I’m probably just confusing relaxing with being a piece of shit. Will Marshall knows all about that and you should too if you read his latest interview in Concrete 112. I got a taste of the Natural Habitat when I spent a day there shooting the portraits for his interview.

Gonna try and keep it short and sweet;

Just been getting out daily, here are some shots from the day to day.

Brian Shannon came down with some homies from MTL.

Tried to skate the good old bump to barrier, security still isn’t a fan of the car tow. I was at a far enough vantage point (across the street, on a hill. Gotta love the 80-200) that I didn’t get my name taken down.

See Matt’s Youngblood in the newest Concrete Issue. All skateshops have it in stock now so go grab your copy!

Mitch Barrette warms up with an ollie. Keep your eyes open for the next SBC issue dropping towards the end of the month!

Jon Piekarski has been copping lately, here he is with a buttery front smith 180 out.

Maggravation.

Who isn’t killing it in Ottawa these days? The young bloods section of the latest Concrete boasts 3 ottawa spots, and two Ottawa skaters back to back. Nothing but stoked for all the homies! The always-on-point Andrew Szeto already picked through the mag an posted up his favorites.

Matt Patafie locks into an early morning front blunt at Parc Lafontaine. I just recently spent a couple days in the awesome city of Montreal to shoot some photos with Patafie.

That last day started with a 9am wake-up, followed by a sketchy free hotel breakfast complete with old hardened danishes and mini-cinnamon buns. They had pitchers of milk with ice cubes in them, and apple juice full of sugar crystals. We resorted to the packaged cereals and muffins, hoping those wouldn’t be expired. Trying to skate downtown in the middle of the day during the week is a definite no no, trying to shoot the photo and asking the mob of business people to stop walking so Matt could ride away was just as important as deking out the security guard by running around the building and hiding a few times.

Cody Anderson gets some.

Aaron Cayer, the man behind Antique skateboards. Follow the company on Twitter, Youtube,  and watch some random iPhone edits from Neil Magadzia. SWAG.

Mitch getting down with the Mystks Crew.

nortonphoto:

I’m sure a bunch of you have heard the less-than-exhilarating tale of my camera gear getting stolen last week. It’s all insured, but here are the serial numbers for some of the bigger items in case you see them pop up somewhere.

Keep your eyes peeled for me and help pass this along.

Nikon D3s
Serial: 2030529

Nikon AF 80-200mm f/2.8 D ED
Serial: 858721

Nikon AF 60mm
Serial: 1471609

Lumedyne Basic Modeling Head
Serial: 158612 

Lumedyne Power Pack 200WS 
Serial: 169990XX

Planning this trip happened pretty darn quickly, shuffling the days of departure around 3 times caused a bit of confusion. I ended up getting a call from Mitch at 11:30pm, saying we needed to leave at 7am the next morning. Having not packed a thing, and feeling a little hazy I got to it. With 5 hours of sleep, and a long rainy drive ahead of us we were on the road by 7:30.

We stopped off at S and J Sales to pick up a few packages and filmed a little line.

When we got into town we were greeted by the wonderful Max Fine, who had lent his living room, and dining room to the group.

We wasted no time in cracking the brews, and heading out on the town partly celebrating for Josh’s first cover. Ending up at a bar, complete with pool tables, many games went down and even a winning bet with a couple chads (ironically wearing DC’s), Josh walked away with $20 and rights to the table for the rest of the night.

The morning after the long night, we ended up at one of many breakfast diners near the crib. Nothing like a late afternoon breakfast to energize the session.

We decided to hit up Dunbat, to warm up the legs and hopefully sweat out some of the toxins we ingested a little too much of the night before. Wobbly legs, and churning stomachs plagued us for the first couple of hours at the park. But spicy beef, and pork burritos was the name of the medicine that got everyone back on their toes. I couldn’t ask for more in a skatepark, nothing more fun and relaxed than a couple ledges and rails with perfect ground for flat.

After what turned out to be a full day at the skatepark, we headed over to The Baitshop to check out the contest DC put on on their newly redesigned miniramp.

With Pabst on heavy flow, things got louder and louder, and people started shredding the crap out of the ramp.  Check out Jordan Moss’s edit from the night to see how hard everyone killed it.

The next day started in the late afternoon, again with diner breakfast. A trend that would continue up until the last morning of the trip.

A couple games of skate broke out on the street next to the first spot of the day.

Mitch gets his stretch on.

Josh eyeing up the angles.

Mitch “Bondo” Barrette showing us where he got the nickname.

In order to finish up the bondo job, I had to sacrifice my griptape as sandpaper.

Max Fine balances out a 5-0 before the bondo job.

A fun 50-50 train wrapped up the session.

Mitch and Josh figuring out what spot to hit next.

On our last day, we decided to check out this spot;

After Mitch got a little beat up by the rail, I took over driving on the way home. Overall a sick trip, can’t wait to get back this summer.

Trying to get back into the routine of posting more stuff here… seems these days I only have time for quick posts through my Twitter account. So if you wanna know what’s up, you should follow it.

Here’s something I was shooting last night, as a little tease of things to come. I promise I’ll start doing some more writing one of these days.. but for now i have 10 days of photo to go through and edit.

See you on the other side..