In dog we trust

Urban surfing at its finest. Connor was having so much fun doing this but, not as much as bruce. Man that dog loved to run around. We did this like 20 times before bruce needed rest. he was one happy pup that night.

That was a fully man!!!

Pat full cabbin' the hip

shot this the other day when james rode the monster... I have been kinda busy since and didnt really play with it until just now. Anyway I really like how it came out and am glad to be shooting something besides the fisheye.

When they designed the skatepark in Riverhead NY, I always questioned what the hell this thing was for. It is like waist height, maybe 100 feet long, and on a mellow downhill. Seemed to me like it was more of a design flaw than an obstacle. Well good ol' Jamie Arroyo had to go and prove me wrong and 50-50 that whole jawn.

p.s. He decided that he needed to ditch the helmet for this one too!!!

Riverhead Skatepark

Mr. Basso

First post back on the island. It has been a little while since my last post, and well today is the day that, that I change all of that. Went to riverhead today with the boyz and met up with our friend Pat. Pat lives like 4 minutes from the park and pretty much kills it. Shot a few bs melons today and well here are the results......

Water-Melon

Pops Park

Nick has been crashing at my place for a little bit now and he has been paying his keep with all of the blunts he keeps bringing to POPS.

To sum up Pops Skatepark, the new skatepark in kensington, all I need is four words. Not bad....Not Good. Let me first start out by saying I am not one to bitch about a free skatepark. Thats how they should be, I feel we should start a movement to free them everywhere, but that is another rant entirely. But there are some issues in pops park that I feel make it a difficult place to skate. Nothing is particularly wrong with anything in the park, all of the pieces work, given the proper room. But at Pops sometimes I feel that things are a little too close. All this can simply be solved by just skating the park more. It is tight but you can do tricks there and well....ITS A FREE SKATEPARK. Leave it at that.

Nick Kershak $$$M$O$N$E$Y$$$

The Offbeats

Nice dance moves ehh?

Every time I go out shooting, I always end up with a bunch of shots that have something special about them but are not the shots that I would use. Either a weird fall shot that looks kooky, or maybe something when I was checking focus and light. These are the offbeats. The Offbeats is a project I have been working on for quite some time now, for a while without even knowing I was. I have always been fond of these images and have just recently started to put them together into one body of work. I got some cool ones the other day and was happy to add them to the body.

Bryson

Thread the Needle

Holy crap is this image a horizontal???? I bet you thought my camera was unable to do that.

This spot is at 1700 Market street, read the sign, and it is super tight. I can not explain how sick this shit is so you need to go and see it for yourself. You need to carve around the corner and avoid the corner of the building, quick set up, pop an ollie, and contort your body into a weird way to fit through the signs. This shit was a squeeze seriously, it is like 2 feet wide and 2.5 feet long. Bryson had to kick one of the first couple away and wound up hitting his knee real hard and sat down for like 20 minutes. But, like the trooper that he is he got up and came through. The new roomate, Nick came through with it too. The angle I got it from above looks real sick, but only got to take that one frame because security came out and gave us shit. But the money maker is below.....enjoy!!

F. D. aRchives

Okay so this month in the fd-archives I pull photos of my all time favorite time at the skatepark. It was a random weekday afternoon in mid to late October, Halloween time. I was sitting at home doing nothing productive, so I decided to take a trip to the skate park. Grabbed my board, camera, and some film and headed out.

When I got to the skatepark I felt like I stepped into a music video. Was I dreaming? was the band playing in the middle of the skatepark? What was going on.......After some investigative research I found out that the locals were having a show to raise money for the park. Chuck Treece, from Bad Brains, was playing with one of his bands and everyone was dressed in costumes. It was pretty sweet to see Artie from Pete and Pete do a miller flip out of the pool in front of the band....that was probably the highlight of the day

"Strongest man, in the World," pulling a miller flip over the spine.

Thrasher: Under the bridge

Check this shit out...Seriously it is about time we start seeing more FDR in the public eye. I cant wait to see it looks Gnar!!!!!!!

Heard talk of a premiere showing at FDR....more on that to come

But Photodelphia sounds so cool....

Bryson Bs 5050...

So I have some unfortunate news to report to everyone. I will be leaving Philadelphia in October to move back to Long Island New York. For the sake of the blog I will not be changing the name. I will be archiving all of my shots from philadelphia as well as scanning a lot of film. So expect many more Philly related posts as well as many Long Island skating too. But, good news is I still have a whole month here and expect to be shooting the whole time too so much more to come! For now....some more oldies!!!!!!!

...and fs 5050

So...I like it now

Uh....is that a tornado??

This is the switch flip from the other day....I started playing around with it and got something I liked.

Truest

While you wait for the truest pics to formulate...I leave you with this

http://truest.wordpress.com/

....One more

Ryan varial kick flip 5050

I never edited this at first thinking that I didn't have enough frames to make anything good....Boy was I red when this came out.

Black ledges

Ryan doing a nollie shuv, to fs 50-50

Two posts in one day WHoOoOOoO!!!! I am very proud of myself, this is some dedication here. We origonally went there for another trick, but this seemed to work better.

P.S. this was second try

P.P.S. He landed it first try too!

The Switchness

While warming up for the switch flip we shot this gem...its only a switch 180, but thanks to a 1/2500 shutter speed its tack sharp.

It has been some time since I have posted last but, the time has come once again. Bryson must hate this spot, the U-Penn ice rink. The hockey rink has already claimed his ancle, and now his board as well. Well not exactly, this board fell victim to him focusing it, but either way they both happened here. Weird coincidence, they were also both on tricks that he slapped out in less than 10 tries the first day we skated this ledge.

But what brought us back today, besides the lure of a switch kickflip, was more. We were asked by a friend of ours to shoot some photographs for his t-shirt company, Truest clothing. I will spare the details until we have a final shot under our belts but for now here is what came out of the session. Nothing crazy, but some fun photos anyway. Still have a long way before we can slap a seal of approval on the truest shot though.

This is the ankle roller that will haunt Brysons soul FOR-EV-ER!!!!

(shot ealier I just wanted to show when he hurt his ankle)

After stomping his board for the second time, Bryson then decides that it is a good time to finally wear the shirt we needed a photo with.

In order to switch flip this ledge the ultimate focus was needed. To make it easier Bryson focussed his board so he could in turn focus more on the switchness. I hated the way the sequence looked so I only posted the frame where his board flexes more than Arnold

I will update again when we have a final shot for Truest.

Greenport Skatepark

Fs Indy, James Arroyo.....killin it

Long Island New York is not exactly known for its skateboarding, especially Suffolk county. Today street skating relies on spots, and well spots rely on the topography of the region. Although it is possible for a place that is relatively flat to have good spots, they always seem to be few and far between. In suffolk county our highest elevation is our landfill, and I think that right there says more than I need to about our abundance of top notch professionals hailing from Long Island.

Don't get me wrong there are some sick people coming up from Long Island, and furthermore you can't blame your skatespots for how good or bad you may be at flipping your board around. But what I am getting at is that Greenport skatepark, like other skateparks in small towns keeps the flame burning. Yes, it is true that the park has seen better days, and sure there a some screws that could use tightening but, this is exactly what the locals are doing. They can't exactly fix the shitty asphalt that is eroding away underneath some of the ramps in the steeper, more bike friendly section of the park, But they can screw coaping back into the min ramp and build a new funbox.

All in all, Greenport is not the best skatepark, but they have a 3 foot mini thats fun, a flawless six foot spine ramp, a vert ramp that still has the new car smell, and all the ramps are metal so they are fast!!!! Yea and don't forget the lights.....even though they are not bright enough to take photos with after dark, I still snapped a few before dusk. Enjoi the shots, and if your ever on the north fork of Long Island stop in at the park and be the judge yourself

Another Fs Indy in the 6 foot other angle

-Chris-

FDR

I first went to FDR about 6 months after I moved to Philly. It was scary, I think it was a saturday at like noon and well lets just say I never really skated parks. Needless to say I didn't get much accomplished on my skateboard that day but, I definitely knew I saw something that I was in to. I have gone back about a million times since then and I have gotten much better at flowing through the park and skating around. Somewhere along the way I brought my camera along with me and well I shot some photos there. Since then I have gone back shooting photos about a million times, also getting about a million times better at shooting them. Here a some photos pulled from the FD-Archives. This is just a mix match pick of skateboarding, and art from south Philadelphia's finest. I am going to post a bunch more about the park in the future this is just like a teaser.......Enjoy!!!

360 to Melon flat

Kinda makes you think...

Jamal Smith five-0 fake out

Bryson Monath pledging his allegiance

From the Archives...

James Arroyo pad-less at the park

For some reason back home, in Long Island New York, skateparks are hardly a year round thing. In fact, most of them have a hard time staying open for business period. It's not that there are not a shit ton of kids who love to skateboard either. But, for some reason Long Island is plagued with skateparks that either are short lived, or god awful. Every now and then there are a few that fall into both categories, and very rarely do you find one that is neither.

The park in Riverhead, New York is one of the few that dose NOT suck. It still is far from FDR or any world famous park....but, it has its moments. One thing that does suck is you need to wear pads and that is no fun.....unless you sneak in on a Wednesday when the park is closed. Then you can have all the fun you want and not have to share the park with little kids either and, that is exactly what we did here. Another thing that comes to mind while looking at this photo is the fact that we had to quick hop the fence and leave when we saw some pigs drive up...but thats the way it goes sometimes

-Chris

New Section

A couple weeks ago I went through a very large pile of old negatives and scanned in a bunch that for some reason or another I never got around to scanning. Most likely school was the reason (Go figure I went to a photo school and did not have enough time for my photos). Anyway Since school I have been definitely growing as a photographer. I feel that I have a better understanding of light and shadow, and my composition seems to be getting better as well. Not that I feel I was a bad photographer when some of these photos were taken, because that is not the case at all....I guess what I am getting at is that the things that used to make my photos good, and still does, was less in my control. Now I have been able to harness those happy accidents into tricks that I can pull out of my bag when the time is right, which makes all the difference.

But, it is not just behind the lens that I have been honing my skills. I feel that I am getting better in post production as well. And that my friends is the reason I am writing this. I would like to dedicate a section of my blog to my old stuff. Pulling happy accidents out of the archives and giving them a new twist. Many of these shots are not going to be re-edits either, I would like to focus mainly on the images, that have sifted through the nets somehow. The ones that got away.

On a side note, these images obviously may not be the ones that spark the most vivid memories, but that is half the fun. They were overlooked, when they were initially developed, but for some of them I still can remember part of the day because of the photos. So clearly this holds much personal value as well. Any memories from any photos in this section will be accompanying the images in order to set the mood.

First things first

This is the first blog of what I hope to be many. I seem to be shooting a ton of photos lately and well need somewhere productive to put them. I have always been interested in making a blog and well finally have got around to doing so. Needless to say, I am excited for this.

Two weeks ago Bryson, a name you will soon become very familiar with if not already, had his little brother come up. He stayed for like a week and a half and then went back to his dads, only to come back the following weekend. Now Everett is only 15 years old but they don't call him mountain for no reason...wait they do call him mountain for no reason. Anyway he has been spending a bunch of time up here with us and well, I got a bunch of real nice shots of both of the Monath brothers ripping it up. Most of them are all part of the flat ground series I have been shooting as of lately, but we went to FDR over the weekend and shot a sequence too.

Bryson Monath Ollie rewind...

Mountain fs 180 from the stratosphere

Fakie tre-flip Everett

Cruiser 360 flip Bryson

Bryson

Bryson smashed the lens on the one after this...But he must have been off by a hair on this one too.

Pipitty Pop Bryson's on his way

Catch steez

denim denim denim...

He may not be related to the Monath brothers, But certainly is a ripper...Snow cone fs ollie

All in all it was a fun two weeks with the little guy, and if my gut is right...I know he'll be spending a lot more time in time in Philly and we will shoot a lot more photos.

-Chris Weger 7/14/09-