The late BBC national weather forecast has just predicted a change from the warm late summer evenings to a cold wet weather system moving in from the north west and so autumn arrives.
For me it's been a summer of change. I quit my day job, a ten year career in industrial quality management to concentrate on photography work. This has led to my busiest summer in a long time, beginning with the Milk Skateboards Summer Skate Camp at Empire Skatepark in Colchester, Essex.
This annual event, held at the start of the school summer break invites young skaters to experience three days of skating fun and games with the Milk crew and friends. It's always a fun event to cover.
Next was a trip to the House of Vans in Waterloo, London for a party to welcome a Thrasher Magazine tour crew. Skating went down earlier in the day but the party raged all night. On our exit in the early hours we found that the Tube system was on strike and so all underground stations we closed until morning. This led to my discovery that public busses in London no longer take cash as payment and the appropriate payment methods were not available. This led to me blagging my way from Waterloo to Epping on night busses with only a Tube train ticket.
The next morning was the start of Lords of The Swords, a county wide road trip skate competition across Essex. I had initially been asked, along with others to cover the event but ended up as a member of one of the 20 teams and enjoyed skating on both sides of the lens for once. The first day was a struggle after a 4am return from the Thrasher party!
As I was out of the country last week, I was unable to attend the awards evening but I was assured that the night went off! I did however enjoy the video premier evening the night before leaving for Berlin and met up with a couple of old school friends that I hadn't seen for over a decade. Lots of words were said.
The next weekend was spent camping with a load of party-goers at Brownstock Festival, held in a field with a mini ramp just outside Chelmsford (post to follow).
On my return I flew to Majorca for a week in the sun (post to follow on my other blog).
And finally, early the morning after the Lords of The Swords premier night, we departed on a Milk Skateboards filming trip to Berlin.
The core crew, two filmers, two photographers and The Boss for the first few days.
As with all Milk trips so far this was a fun and productive trip dotted with odd experiences, impromptu sightseeing, a whole load of footage and photos and unfortunately, a couple of days of rain (post to follow).
On my return from Deutschland I was given the welcome news that two more of my photos have been used in adverts in the UK based skateboarding publication Sidewalk Magazine. Thanks again to Milk Skateboards.
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| Milk Skateboards 'Tubs' deck advert. Sidewalk Magazine, August 2014. |
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| Milk Skateboards 'Missing' / 'Molotov' decks advert. Sidewalk Magazine, September 2014. |
