Grok Steady

mayday, mayday

Conor Kodan Lynam from 360 Project in Australia, pivot fakie at the inauguration of what's got to be Cambodia's first skateboard park, Friday, 25 March 2011. Quick 'n' dirty edit.
© 2011 Rick Valenzuela

 

No distress*, but maybe a few everyday slams in between tricks at the opening of a skatepark in Phnom Penh's Pourire Sous les Enfants Pour un Sourire d'Enfant school, in Stung Meanchey district. The few dudes who skate in town put on a demo, as well as guys from 360 Project, a design-and-donation outfit from Australia that gave 30 completes to the park. Still a little baffled that this really happened, and, after rumors of one every couple of years, was pleasantly surprised. I was alternating hard between wanting to shoot video, shoot stills and roll around myself. At this point, I'm getting the most satisfaction setting up strobes and laying in filth (on purpose).

 

* non-skate nerds, or young skate non-nerds: a pivot fakie was once called a mayday.

PS: As I play catchup on this thing, I meant to post up my last video at The Phnom Penh Post. Typepad won't embed it, so here it is.

a return, and more history

Been a bit remiss about posting again.

Somewhat recent things:

A newish online skateboard mag, Already Been Done, interviewed me about Journal. In the folllowup, they have a video interview with Tim O'Connor about Ryan Gee busting his spleen while out on a photo shoot, the reason he ended being called The Gill in the Bam/Jackass stuff. They also put up scans of all three issues, in case you've never seen them, or never see them anymore because they're in a dusty box somewhere.

http://alreadybeendone.com/content/2011/01/18/regift-journal-magazine/

http://alreadybeendone.com/content/2011/02/08/regift-journal-1-2-and-the-story-of-gees-spleen/

If you can, check out ABD from a mobile device. That's how it's intended to be viewed, and it's worth it. It's looking good, and the main dudes behind it are Josh Friedberg, from 411 days, and Rob Brink of The Skateboard Mag, so you know it's going to be.

snowboard photog getting stiffed on pay

More ripoffs in the photography industry -- a snowboard photog getting told off and called "unstable" by the CEO of a company because he invoiced them for an image they used on their Web site.

There's two changes going on here. With decent hobbyists and unthinking rookies giving out free work, professional photogs really need to prove their value in their fees, contracts and deliverables, and need to stand up to crap contracts and deadbeat companies. Chris Messervey is doing the right thing here. I hope he gets his, at the compounded rate that he's asking. The other shifting grounds are these industries. There's some comments calling Messervey unprofessional, purportedly by established professional photographers, presumably by ones who aren't part of that specific industry.

I don't know jack about snowboarding, only what I've gleaned from skateboarders who do it too and because it gets lumped together in what used to be called "action sports". I figure the snowboarding industry has gone through the same insane growth skating has, probably sooner, quicker and on a larger scale. Companies started up by bros who live the life and took out a loan, turning into major teams/brands, then evolving into what are now called "core companies" that might hire execs from outside the industry, and sharing a market with household-name, publicly trade corporations tapping into that segment.

For anyone who's working as a photog or video shooter in snowboarding, skating, etc., some companies are not going to operate like it was back in the day. That bro network is fine between the shooter, the sponsored person and the team manager, but beyond that, it'll probably be different. Some numbers guy from outside the industry doesn't care, doesn't think about doing it or laying on the ground or climbing up something to get the shot, or things like that. He never did it, and doesn't appreciate it beyond what it does for the bottom line. The CEO stiffing Messervey, Joseph Condorelli of Grenade Gloves, an apparel company, is a skiier who can hardly stand up on a board. From what I gather, he took the reins of an established company, and maybe ruined it as far as "core customers" go.

For the future, I don't know how it will work in situations like how this one started -- Messervey gave an image file to the snowboarder he shot. That's par for the course, give him a low-res jpeg. They went on a trip together, not commissioned by company or mag. He shares the good times/end results, and the snowboarder figures out which team manager to send it to. He acts as an agent for himself and the photog, for whichever coverage is best or needed -- magazines where the rider gets a photo incentive from his sponsor, or to a sponsor for use in an ad. This was standard operating procedure in skating not too many years ago, probably still today in many places, and works fine if this guy's main sponsors are really core companies that won't screw over a photog. It doesn't make sense to -- if the sponsored guy went on a mission and brought along this shooter, they're probably friends and have been and will continue doing this together. But if these industries are all going the way of every other big business, that M.O. is going to have to change. You go on a trip like this with friends, but after that, it's business, and it might have to be conducted the same way as you would a client in any other industry.

H/T to Lightstalkers' Alerts and PDN Pulse.

Nostalgia: Journal No. 0

Kevin Taylor, front blunt, Philadelphia City Hall, photo © 1995 Ryan Gee

My trip home soon and a bunch of good oldies on Facebook got me digging around the hard drive for this not-so-great scan of Journal issue zero. 

Download Journal_zero

This mag is a teenager now, 14 years old. It was slapped together around the end of 1995, with special thanks to the Blizzard of '96 for a huge free-time boom.

In the mid-90s a bunch of us were really getting into the idea of skateboard companies on the East Coast, companies like Zoo York and Torque, and magazines like The Five (Atlanta) and Smag (Baltimore) before us. Journal Vol. 0, No. 0 was the mockup of our vision, and we wanted to take that around to show what we could do and sell it to advertisers. We assembled a decent cast of characters, but ran it like you'd expect a bunch of kids getting together to do something. We lived and worked in a crappy Section 8 skatehouse in Queen Village, Philadelphia, next to a recreation park with skateable benches and tables, where at night you'd see the red cherry of a crackpipe glow bright and get passed along. Up the street was a guy with two pit bulls named Chronic and Caine, and two days after we met him, there was a shootout in the direction of his place. The next morning, while we played gin rummy on the sidewalk, police ambushed the place and kicked the door in.

We spent ludicrous sums on Velvia and parking tickets, had a beeper sponsor (seriously), and would go get the best veggie banh mi and John's water ices while waiting for the Power Mac 7100 (80Mhz, 16MB RAM, 250MB HD) to render stuff. We output everything to chunky, 5.25" 44MB SyQuest disks that lost data if you picked them up too fast. The Cardonas sent us their check-out bios on notebook paper with doodles, and it took about five minutes to figure out there was no way to transcribe it and make it read normal, so we scanned it. Close to deadline we would practice "extreme sleeping": working the day job and the mag job for about 18 hours and then finding the worst possible position/place to lay down, the idea being that you would only sleep as much as necessary like that. I often crawled onto the middle tier of a shelving unit, and Nerd lined up a tunnel of chairs.

We remarkably did make it to the trade show with this issue, and in a week had just barely learned, wrote and uploaded a website too. The Nerdernet was young then, and our links page had four sites, plus Nerd's homemade warning to use Netscape 2.0, then the top choice in frame-supporting browsers.

We gave out mags with stickers and rate cards, and some T-shirts -- our very first one, a heather gray shirt with Journal in a plain serif font and a strikethrough. Our photog John Senesy made it in Microsoft Works. Works.

Over the next few weeks I'll try to scan the other two issues, and whatever shirts I still have. I think I have the nose grind sticker (it's not Jimmy Chung) but not the "split in half" sticker. If anyone reading does, please send a pic.