Rich, Heather and Alana’s Blog

Rich here. I’m mostly writing this blog for my little bro in South Florida. I think (hope) he’ll appreciate this since he’s all things athletic. We miss him terribly and can’t wait to see him again this Christmas!

Last Thursday, I got to meet up with my good friend Matt Dunmore at Starbucks to go shooting (not guns… cameras). Matt is simply a photographer through and through and he’s excellent at it (which helps). I believe his greatest talent is to make ANYTHING… even mundane things… look really interesting. It’s refreshing to see. He maintains a photoblog (he posts a picture a day on it) which I would encourage anyone to put in their bookmarks to visit everyday.

Also at Starbucks I had the privilege to meet Jeff Breedlove who is an aspiring wedding photographer and an all around really nice guy. He’s so nice I can forgive him for shooting with a Nikon.

Here’s Jeff:

Here’s Matt (on the right) and some guys shooting the breeze:

Since we met at 7:30 at Starbucks, after we met everyone and got a general idea who everyone was, it was definitely dark outside. So we decided to go to a local skatepark where one of Matt’s friends was playing rollerhockey. We totally ignored his game and concentrated on all the kids skateboarding — no offence David!

Here at the skateboarding park, I learned a few things. One, all the kids were super nice. Two, they love cameras and will amp up their skateboarding, hotdogging it so that we could get a great shot of them and immediately show it to them afterwards. Three, it’s impossible for these kids to get hurt. I’m sure their bones are made of rubber. Four, I’m old.

Here are some shots I took:

Jordan below was a really neat kid. He was telling me all of the sponsors he’s gotten in the short 2 years he’s been skating. All the big names like Oakley are sponsoring him. Not bad for a 14 year old! Nice kid! Delusional… but really nice. I’m probably going to get this photo printed and take it to him since he’s out there all the time.

This kid was only 12 years old and been skating for 1 year! He did the “Michael-Jordan-tongue-hanging-out-of-the-mouth” thing every time he jumped. One of these days he’s going to forget to stick that thing back in before he hits the ground! Neat kid but totally forgot his name.

I thought for sure someone was going to die. This one crazy kid (freshman in college) was doing backflips on his bike up a ramp. I knew it was only a matter of time before he lost an appendage (like his head). Matt and Jeff now call me “old man” because every time a kid fell down my automatic response without fail was to say “Are you okay? You be careful out there, all right?” Then I’d cringe afterwards. Have I gotten to THAT age!? It got to the point that I’d hear myself saying it and stop in mid-sentence. Thankfully though, the kids didn’t seem to mind my concern. They were convinced that we were with the paper and all the photos we shot were going to be in the paper the next day. Hilarious.

Matt graciously allowed me to use his lenses. One of the coolest his has is this 15mm fisheye lens. I got on top of the ramp, stuck the camera above my head and the photos makes it look like I’m like 20 feet in the air shooting down. It was definitely fun to play with.

To see some of Matt’s pictures from that night, head over to this post on his blog. You’ll see the crazy guy doing crazy things on his bike! We had a great time. Lots of laughs and we got to meet a lot of really neat people. Can’t wait until next time!