Yep, i've got poison oak again... At the moment, I'm shivering with my window wide open and no shirt on (because i'd rather freeze than itch) while working on some graphics for Golden State.

Last week, I went up to San Luis Obispo to shoot with Evan Bissel and some others (David, Kevin Pabinquit and Dan Troyan) for two days for Golden State. We started shooting Wednesday afternoon, not long after I got there. It had been raining up until that day, so I was hoping it wouldn't so we could shoot. On the way up, there were a few small cloudbursts, but fortunately that was it! The spots we shot at happened to all be within 10 minutes of walking from Evan's truck at most. The first shot I was setting up (a small lip to a landing down a hill) had amazing light. The fog was thin enough to show sunlight coming through it, toward me with green hills below in the background. While I was getting this shot setup, Evan was eyeing a steep cliff to roll into up the trail a bit. I think he had a harder time getting up the cliff, than down it. He ended up getting stuck about three-quarters of the way up. David went up to help him the rest of the way. By helping, I mean getting his bike and tossing it up a few feet up the cliff. I somehow made my way down a narrow ledge, 15 feet up without falling to get the shot. Surprisingly, Evan dropped in, rode it perfectly and didn't ride off the edge of the trail below (the only runout was the two foot wide trail). By the time we went back to get the first shot I had setup, more fog had rolled in, blocking the rays of sunlight and green hills. I waited 15 minutes in hopes of it clearing up, but it didn't and we moved on... We setup a few more shots and then headed back into town after it got dark.

The next day, we got up early and were pushing up a trail by 6:30am. My backpack was stupid heavy, with the extra bag on the back of it (which is probably 23lbs). I don't even want to know what the whole thing weighs. By the time we finished that trail, it was about noon. We were starving so we went to Firestone Grill. He got a burger and I got a tri-tip sandwich with blue cheese. He had to back by 3, so we didn't have a lot of time. We got our food and were off to the next trail. Hiking up this trail, I knew I was screwed, seeing so much poison oak, especially on the lower half. By the top, we met up with Dan Troyan, who I got some shots of as well. It was so windy, which made it a bit hard to walk with my backpack even. The wind was whistling through holes in my camera gear. We made our way down from the top, shooting sections we decided were worth it with the time we had. The last shot was going to be down a section called pussy crack, a narrow channel into a rollin. We didn't have much time, because the sun was dropping behind the ridge. I was ready for the shot and evan was about to hit it, when Dan noticed a rotor bolt was sticking out and crooked. It didn't happen. It was a good decision not to hit it at that point, but we were both disappointed we didn't get the shot. The light could have been better anyway, so we'll have to re-shoot it.

The week before that trip, I was on the Santa Barbara City College trip. I was really hoping for a storm, which never came. There was no powder, so I ended up being in the park most of the time, hitting jibs. I was having such a good time getting better at rails and ledges in South Park that the lack of powder wasn't a big deal. Jibs Galore, the left most run, before the border-x course which is full of jibs (like the name implies) is so much fun. The Grand Prix Olympic Qualifiers happened to be in mammoth that week, so I couldn't pass up an opportunity to shoot an event like that. I shot halfpipe Wednesday and then slopestyle Thursday. I still need to finish going through my shots and get the gallery up. Some of my photos from the trip last year are, on this page. I also made a video of last year's trip, which was my first video ever.

We rode all day friday, left a bit after 4 and arrived back in SB at around 11. At 7am, the next day, I left for fontana. I shot most of practice and ended up only getting about 2 practice runs. The silty off camber, then s-turn section in the middle of the course was changing so much. My first practice run down it, I was fairly fast and smooth. My second run through that section was a mess, taking all the wrong lines and forgetting how I hit it the previous time. I ended up getting 17th out of 30. It's not great, but I was happy with it considering I was shooting the whole time during practice and racing expert instead of sport.

Since then i've been at home, for a while for the first time in a few weeks. It's been pouring here and dumping in the mountains. I'd like to go snowboarding at the end of the week at mammoth if I can figure it out before I start school on the 26th.

Sunday morning, I finished the Golden State teaser. I was working on it all morning and had to leave early for a mammoth city college trip. It took way too long due to issues like me having little experience with slideshows in a video editor, rendering issues, and a spelling mistake I noticed just after uploading it and wait for it to convert on vimeo. The group was leaving at 8am. I wanted to leave to leave my house at 7:15, but it was at 7:40 that I noticed an error... I had to fix it and render a new version (which took 3 attempts to get rendered correctly) and take it with me on a thumb drive. It's now finally, done and up on vimeo. I somehow got there just before 8.
I wanted it up Sunday morning, because i'm in mammoth the rest of the week, getting back home at probably midnight and leaving for the fontana race, 6 hours later. I'm happy it's up after that.

The teaser has shots from shoots and events I shot for the slideshow. The best shots will be in the final version, so expect a lot more.

I'm just now getting the photos from the fontana race in november up. Here's the gallery: 09.11.21-22 - Southridge 18th Annual Challenge. I got two shots that i'm really happy with for Golden State, the slideshow that weekend.

A few weeks ago, at the beginning of the month, I went down to San Diego to shoot the X-Fusion Sideflight Championships (a whip contest). I took the the train down and stayed with JD Swanguen. We got to the jumps friday for practice and everyone was soon hitting the jumps and getting sideways. Saturday (finals), everyone was not hitting the jumps and getting sideways... due to wind because of an incoming storm. That was disappointing, but at least I was at the jumps Friday for practice. (unlike many of the photographers that showed up Saturday) and left happy with I got. The rest of the weekend, I was planning on shooting JD for Golden State. We woke up at 5am to rain...which sucked. We didn't end up shooting, so i'll have to plan another trip down there. Despite the weather screwing things up, I had a good time with JD and got some good shots.

• my article on ridemonkey: http://www.ridemonkey.com/blogs/news-9/x-fusion-sideflight-championships-69/
• the gallery: 09.12.04-05 - X-Fusion Sideflight Championships

You may have heard about a project i've been working on over the last month. It's a slideshow on mountain biking in California; the riders and the riding, titled Golden State. I've done slideshows in the past for class projects, but they didn't have much thought put into them, beyond the individual photos themselves. I wanted to try shooting in a different way by taking into account the relation and flow of pictures in a slideshow. The idea of doing a slideshow first popped into my head sometime after seeing the slideshows at the Deep Summer Photo Challenge at Crankworx this year. Weeks after the initial idea, I started thinking about it more. Soon, I was coming up with ideas and putting them down.

I recently got back from Northern California where I shot for the slideshow. I shot James Anastasios Koch in Pacifica, Amado Stachenfield & Justin Shenk in Santa Cruz and Brian Damschen & some others in Monterey. I'll be putting up galleries of outtakes and other shots from the shoots.

My original goal was to be have it finished the second week of January, but it's going be pushed back a bit later until probably the end of January. Yesterday was Christmas and there's still lots of shots I haven't gotten and places & riders I haven't yet shot. In a week, I'll have a teaser finished!

I haven't posted in while because i've been adding some new things to the site and have been working on a project. You can now comment on my blog posts (by clicking the comment buttons) and easily share them via email, twitter, facebook, and other networks (by clicking the icons on the share buttons). I've also added categories and tags, below the posts. You can click them and view other posts of the same category or tag. The only thing incomplete is that each post is going to the right on individual post pages (linked to from the titles on the news page) in Internet Explorer 7 and 6. It's a non issue in Internet Explorer 8... but there are much better browsers out there like Firefox and Safari.