SHRED OR DEAD

In May last summer after becoming involved in couriering I photographed race put on by Super Champion among others.

I returned late last night from adventures in San Francisco. I have a few things to say about that city, and I assure you, they are all nice things. Pretty much epic hills, views everywhere, downtown that looks like it would be a blast to get to know via working as a courier and the city doesn’t appear to be destroying architecture that has a history to it (the way Vancouver seems to like to). Skate spots galore, and skaters everywhere as well, actually the first three people I talked to that were native to SF happened to be skaters (at one point or another) and two of them worked in the camera shops I stopped by. I actually did some street skating, at a spot I had seen in the last (the Green) issue of Color Magazine (though I didn’t manage to land the wallride, as some asshole walked over and pissed on the wall in the middle of my one man session). I also managed to meet a challenge of my friends while we waited for the bus in our last moments in San Francisco, doing an ollie through a large ship tie down by the ferry building (I’m hoping to have the Polaroid Jason shot in my grips shortly so that I can show my parents what my mediocre skating looks like).

I’ll have to admit though. And in many ways I’d like to apologize to my friends on the trip with me; but I was really bummed for a large part of the trip. As stated in this post I’ve been really down on where I am with my photography lately. My habitual overthinking everything in my life tends to do that to me. But when on a trip with some of the best friends I have, all of which are excited about taking photographs, and physically taking large numbers of them, I bummed myself out. And I let it show. I feel like, and was assured by more than one confidant, that I did indeed bring the mood of the trip down.

I bummed myself out because I wasn’t as inclined as I (totally) should have been (really excited) to photograph the trip. And with all my amazing photographer friends around being excited, I outed myself from the group; being the dude who isn’t certain about what he’s doing there. I decided that I wasn’t a valuable part of the group, because I wasn’t contributing; as a result I contributed even less, and that was stupid.

I can’t say that I’m back to being excited with where my photographs may or may not be going, but I will say that two things made me snap out of the funk a little. The first being that upon seeing the results of shooting the 20×24 Polaroid camera my friends and I made the pilgrimage to shoot, I couldn’t let myself not shoot an image. That image broke the bank in many ways, but it was an opportunity that I quite possibly will never have the chance at doing again. And once I saw the images I actually wanted to cry a little. I think I’ve talked before about fetish-izing the photograph and the print, and the objects (the prints) themselves and the images coming out of them speak so much about many things I care about in the photograph.

That first thing happened, and then afterwards in a fancy lounge/bar atop San Francisco’s Mariott I had a conversation with my friend Brendon that I needed to have. It in many ways reaffirms that I need to work harder, or possibly just keep working. That is, I’m not sure what direction my photographs are moving in, and I’m not sure what kind of things my photographs say or mean to others; I’m letting it bug me out. Then I need to forget about that. I need to just take photographs. That’s it.

It’s pretty ridiculous that these things, the act of simply shutting up and taking/printing photographs, is some kind of revolution. But being a stress case, overthinking everything in my life is making me unproductive, and unhappy. And then again, I need to start putting these personal revolutions in action, walk the talk as it were. I need to actually physically make photographs and then some of the issues I’m having with hopefully wrinkle themselves flat.

Anyways, I guess to my friends, I’m sorry that I’m pretty bummed out about what I’m doing right now, and it was pretty unacceptable for me to be such a downer. But I’m going to try to shut up about it all and just do things. If I don’t I’m going to miss out on something else.