Smashed in the Face for X-Mas

After 35+ years of shooting skateboarding off and on (mostly on),
there's a price to pay to get stylish shots like this one:

(click to enlarge each image)

Actually on thursday I was hoping to finish my last 2 rolls of Kodachrome before the processing deadline next week. While shooting about half a roll that day, I asked to take a look through Dan from Juice magazine's 35mm digital SLR, and then asked if i could shoot a few pic's. He seemed stoked to oblige. It was pretty cool I must admit, to see results immediately, but honestly the lens was too wide (believe it) and the timing of the shutter took some getting used to. That said I got this great shot of Venice local, Haden McKenna (above). I actually knew this 15 year olds' dad, when he was 15 and i was probably just 18. He reminds people of some other popular young Venice rats over the years long gone by, but as bad ass as the kid is, he was still really nice, and had a good attitude with me, I was happy to shoot a couple of shots of this virtual unknown on film, and with Dan's digital. I think we'll see something in Juice from this session. For the first time ever, I shot a few of Jesse Martinez (the Godfather of the Venice skatepark) and another blazin' local Jaime Quaintance as well.

So, here's the shot of my dues being payed up:


Yes, I always look through the lens when i'm shooting, so yes, blood was drawn from the brow for several minutes and numbness in the face for about a minute, but I actually felt no pain and continued shooting....

"Welcome back to Venice" as one of the locals said to me.

Good times.