Summer Recap

Peter over at rEvolution waded through gigs and gigs of Adam and G's footage from this summer and condensed it into this clip. Check it out

Starting in on the Summer's Photos - Mike Davis, Drop In

This ditch spot in California was the first real street skating we did this summer on the Hometown Heroes tour, and while most people wouldn't see a nearly vertical wall with a drainage hole in it as a spot, Mike Davis from Portland had no trouble dropping in on it. In fact he had so little trouble that he didn't mind doing it multiple times so the filmer and I could both get multiple angles. I could pick which one I like better, but it's the internet, so why not put up both.

So, everyone waiting to see their photos from this summer, you can see I am working on them and I promise they are coming. This is the first of 3-months' worth of rad skating. Lots more to come...

Two Street Photos from CA

Before I get around to working on all the photos I shot this summer I wanted to catch up on some older stuff gathering some metaphorical dust on my harddrive. Here are two photos from my trip out to California last January



Skating around downtown LA this brick volcano spot is a pretty safe bet for a good time. Tucker boosted a little ollie before Paul road a Segway.



I have known Tylor for a pretty long time, so he is used to waiting for photos from me. Between my last post and this, he should be pretty stoked. He didn't come with Tucker, Paul and me on our trip out, but Tylor happened to be southern California at the same time, so we did some skateboarding and he got a Front Blunt across this Huntington Beach ledge.

Tylor O's Ramp Destruction Party

After the Hometown Heroes finals at the X-Games in LA and shooting photos at Maloof in Orange County another summer on the road has come to an end. I have a few free weeks before my big trip West so I'm doing my best to catch up on editing some photos, and some of those should make it here to the blog. Here's the first of those



Back in April I got a message from Tylor O'Connor that he was moving out of his apartment and the affectionately titled Slum Dog Mini-ramp needed to get torn down. Tylor's not one to do anything quietly (ask his neighbors), so he threw a little Sunday night party to let everyone get their last tricks in on the mini-mini-ramp. The session ended with Tylor getting a Blunt-Fakie on a TV, and then smashing it.



Sorry for the wait for the photos, Tylor! Keep your eyes here for more catch-up photos coming soon...

Summer on the Road

Between graduating from college in Chicago, moving out of my apartment there, and a day later hitting the road on a tour that has me in a new city nearly every day, this blog has had a bit of a dry spell. That said, my photos and I have been anything but absent from the internet.



If we are friends on Facebook then I am sure you have seen my Mobile Uploads blowing up the past few months, but if we're not then you can still keep up with all the day to day goings-ons of Hometown on its Twitter, which I am pretty much the only one to post to and is the destination for all my phone-photos seconds after I snap them. Follow @hhskate. If you're not into the Twitter thing you can see these same photos dished off to http://philsphone.tumblr.com



For the updates from Hometown Heroes contests check out http://hhskate.com/photos/. I shoot every contest that Hometown puts on and the photos are usually up within a couple of days.



In addition to Hometown I was also brought on as the photographer for the Zumiez Best Foot Forward Am Contests Series and the Zumiez Couch Tour. The Couch Tour consisted of 12 stops across the US where Zumiez would construct a small festival in a mall parking lot, have bands play, and put up a skate course for the BFF contest, as well as a pro demo. As crazy and hectic as those days were, (not to mention the sleepless nights of photo-editing that usually followed) I met a lot of cool folks and had a fun time being part of the tour.
All of my photos from Couch Tour are online now at http://couchtour.zumiez.com, just click any of the dates at the top, then click Photos, or for better quality check them out on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/zumiez/ where any of the 2010 Couch Tour or Best Foot Forward photos were shot by me.
All of the BFF photos are on its separate site at http://www.zumiezbestfootforward.com/photos



Aside from all the contests and events, Hometown is really about skateboarding, and I have been doing a ton of it, as well as shooting a ton of it. I have been lucky to meet, skate with, and share a smelly van with some really sick people this summer, and once I have time to actually go through them all, I have a ton of skate photos from across the country that I am hyped to share.
I am super psyched that Shak and everyone brought me on this trip, and it's not over yet, so be sure to keep up at the Hometown site and especially the Twitter @hhskate

2-for-1 at Ashland and Addison

Blue ledge, blue bank, ollie up to bank, Ashland bank to ledge...whatever you call this spot, it is blocks from my apartment. But as convenient as it would be for me to skate and shoot photos here regularly, I totally understand why it's not the most popular spot in the city. The sidewalk is littered with everything from gravel to broken glass, then you ollie up onto the chunky, slanted, narrow blue ledge, and then try to get your trick within the few feet that are actually waxed.
That said, there have been some pretty cool tricks done on it, and some people find it fun. So here are a couple photos of suburbanites Mike Kadar and Jim Farrell getting down on a back tail and back 5-0, respectively.

Dalba, BS Feeble

If you check my flickr with any regularity you might remember my post last fall that featured Dalba taking a bite out of Chicago Avenue. Here he is again with a land. Dalba has a unique bag of tricks that is always entertaining and unexpected. This bank-to-ledge in Chicago isn't the biggest spot ever, but a perfectly balanced back feeble with some warm sun backlight makes for a pretty solid photo opportunity.