The 4lb Summer Nights Cherries export box, flying off the shelves at supermarkets from BC to Ontario, and all the way to India. This smaller export box is printed full colour on white card stock. Click the photos to see a larger version.

One of the projects I’ve been working on at Tugboat Group since late January of this year is designing and producing an array of deliverables for Jind Fruit Co. Last year Tugboat re-branded the Osoyoos, BC based fruit grower, designed and built their website, and this year the push has been to get all the packaging designed, printed and delivered to the orchard before the fruit comes off the trees. There’s been a team of us creating the clamshell labels, bags, and many boxes for the complete line of Jind Fruit Co.’s product line which includes Summer Nights Cherries™, Summer Love Peaches™, Summer Fling Select Fruit™ (nectarines, apricots, Italian prune plums and grapes) and Summer Breeze Apples™.

A couple of weeks ago the Summer Nights Cherries samples started arriving at the office, filled with hundreds of pounds of the tasty little things. I quickly shot these pictures on my iPhone and will shoot them better on my real camera later on, but just wanted to share some of these first looks at the new boxes. The old-fashioned looking boxes (the faded looking ones printed on the craft paper stock) were a challenge to print – they are not printed using the standard CMYK inks, but rather using a special technique called ChromaPak, where the images and graphics are split into different colours and use a special ink that’s custom-made to work better with the craft paper. There was a bit of a learning curve to this technique, and each image required special work to make them look like they do. Our printers really had their work cut out for them on these boxes.

I’ll put together a little more info about the printing process when I shoot my samples with my good camera and officially put them into my portfolio section, but for now you could check out this story on the Tugboat Group website where I gave some background info on the technical challenges we faced when designing the craft packaging. We’re pretty stoked on how it all turned out. The other print samples are just starting to come in for some of the other boxes, and you can see some of those below. I’m just finishing up the Summer Breeze Apple boxes so they can go out to the printer this week and be back in time for those apples to start being picked.

Stacks of the original shipment of the Summer Nights Cherries™ export box. As part of a targeted PR campaign, boxes of cherries were sent out to hundreds of media outlets, personalities, and a hand-picked list of foodies and bloggers.

The top of the 20lb. Summer Nights Cherries™ bulk box features a large scenic graphic. The cherry bags and clamshells are then shipped inside the beautiful, protective box.

The Summer Nights Cherries™ bags as seen on the shelves of my local Safeway.

Summer Love Peaches lattice-top box (collapsed down).

Summer Fling Select Fruit™ bulk box top has a large full colour illustration and graphics on the side.

Summer Fling Select Fruit box with lattice-top.

The best part is that on the boxes where there are mis-registration issues, like we see here, you’re treated to an old-school printing appearance (much like letterpress), almost as if it was meant to look like this — for free!

Click the photos to see a larger version.

With the cherry season going into full swing, our client Jind Fruit needs imagery for its Summer Nights Cherries to go out via the social networks. One night Katie brought home these cute ceramic fruit baskets from Anthropologie, and I thought they’d look great in a photo. Believe it or not, this top photo isn’t even styled. We had just finished dinner, I moved our plates out of frame, put the cherries in the baskets, and banged off a few shots. The flowers were already in place, and our new deck is in full swing, making a perfect background.

We also had just bought a Zoku Quick Pop Maker (makes popsicles in 7 minutes!), and Katie wasted no time trying out recipes with the 22.5lbs of cherries that I brought home. This popsicle was made from fresh Dark Red Sweet cherries, and if that doesn’t say “What Summer Tastes Like”, I don’t know what does. The 4lb box export box we designed is in the background.

These ice pops were made from Rainer cherries and apple juice. They taste WAY better than they look in the photo. This photo went out via my personal Twitter account (via Instagram) and then RT’d (re-tweeted) for a more authentic, unbranded share.

You can see the Jind Fruit Co. website here. I’ll share more photos of the Jind packaging as samples come in, but for now you could check out this story on the Tugboat Group website which includes a little bit of background on the technical challenges we faced when designing the craft packaging for Jind.

The wedding of Murray Hoyt and Pati Teed on Sunday, July 1st, 2012 at the Salmon Federation Interpretation Centre in St. Andrews, NB. Click the photos for larger previews – and use the right/left arrows to scroll through the slideshow.

This is just the first selections of photos from Murray and Pati’s great day… Many more family and friends photos are available to view at the link below.

Feel free to share the link to these photos with your friends and family, as this is probably the easiest way to share these photos. To download the photos to your computer, you should be able to right-click and ‘save as…’ to your drive (or you can drag and drop from the web browser to your desktop).

UPDATE: July 23 – I’ve uploaded 68 photos from the wedding to my Google gallery for you to view and share. Click the link where you can view the photos, and leave comments there if you’d like.

Katie and myself at the wedding.

Photo shot by Paul at MuffinAndPedal.com. Click the photo to see a larger version.

I’ve been trying to get out and ride Ron Mercer’s backyard paradise, the ‘Woodyard’ whenever I get a chance. It is absolutely amazing, and one of the only opportunities to ride a wood ramp anywhere in the Lower Mainland – your only options are concrete or dirt, so this really is something to see. Here’s an overview photo of the ramp from on top of that wedge quarterpipe. This ramp has pretty much every kind of element on it including the new 9-foot bowled-out corners and hip on it. Scary, but super fun.

You can see the full story on the MuffinAndPedal.com blog here.

This is an editorial I wrote in late 1991, and much to my surprise, was published in the February 1992 issue of Go Magazine. I was originally just going to run this little story in my ‘zine, SToKe, but I was feeling the vibe of the story, and thought I’d send it over to the guys at Go Magazine and see what happens. About 6 months before I’d sent the magazine editor a photo I shot from a contest I went to in New York City. They ran that photo in the news section of the magazine (you can see that below) and that kinda blew me away. I figured if they didn’t run my story, I’d just use it in my ‘zine, so I really had nothing to lose. I was pretty shocked a few months later when the magazine hit the newsstands – and there was my piece in the coveted magazine editorial intro space. Holy shit! This completely blew my mind.

I posted this story on the Chase BMX Magazine website back on Jan. 11, 2001 – it seems so, so long ago. And to put that into perspective, two days before I put that on the website, we broke the news that Ruben Alcantara had just signed with MacNeil. Wow. Here’s the post of what I actually put up – this time I was digging through digital archives when I came across this, and thought I should probably archive it on my site. We’re packing up the house, moving into a townhome we just bought, so looks like I’m moving those several boxes of old BMX magazines one more time.

I was digging through one of several boxes of old BMX magazines (ranging from the present back to 1982) at home the other night the other night when I came across this old editorial I did for Go Magazine waaay back in the day. I totally forgot about it. I mean, I wrote in more than 9 years ago, so I sat down and read it. It got me thinking… as cliché as it is – the more things change, the more they stay the same. BMX has gone through some pretty crazy changes over the last decade, but it all comes back to that first rush you got when you pulled that first trick, cleared that set of doubles, or finally got above the coping on a vert ramp. Another thing that hasn’t changed – I’m still a horrible writer…

Well, at least I’ve worked on the writing a bit now…

Here’s the cover of that issue… Dave Clymer roasting the stairs at the Nude Pool (I’d have to dig out the issue to confirm that was the Nude Pool, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the stairs looked like).

This is the photo I sent in from the Mullaly Park contest in New York City (South Bronx actually, right by Yankee Stadium). I have to admit I was pretty stoked at the time to get this photo of Jeff Harris’ barrel roll attempt published. Today that photo would never run, because a magazine would never run a photo of an un-pulled trick. At the time this trick was completely unfathomable, and now 22 years later I think you could count on two hands how many times it’s been landed. Looking back at the rest of the photos that ran for the coverage of that contest, I should have sent more of mine in. This was just supposed to be a smaller contest, and the magazine probably didn’t have to budget to have one of their pro photographers there to cover it. But the quality of riders there made this a pretty large contest. I would have to say that this was probably Taj Mihelich’s breakout contest. His style still stands out in my mind, hitting that super small jumpbox (most certainly by today’s standards), his Grizz airs over that thing were legendary.

A moody photo I shot of Coal Harbour and downtown Vancouver from Stanley Park one evening in February. I was running around shooting photos for my nephew’s ‘Flat Stanley’ class project, and happened to catch sundown on this moody weather day. Just happened to catch this very blue-cast lighting at the right time, and I like the feel of it because it was definitely a ‘blue Februray day’ in Vancouver. Click to see it larger.

I suppose Instagram is making my iPhoto dumps obsolete… Even on Twitter I pretty much just posted photos anyway (nobody needs to hear my ramblings), so this is kind of a ‘best of’ throughout the month.

• A foggy evening of snowboarding on Cypress Mountain.
• Snack Day at work, strawberry & chocolate ganache dusted with chocolate powder – you can see the full archive of snack day pics at #snackdaywed
• Another amazing snow day at Cypress Mountain. Katie’s in this picture off to the right, but you can’t see her for the trees.
• Random rusty stuff hanging on a red wall.
• Small Claims Court in Vancouver. I’d rather not have been there, but sometimes it’s the only way to get a client (now ex-client, of course) to pay.
• Another photo from the ‘trash spot’ in our alley behind work. Almost every day there’s a new gem there. An almost brand new Fisher-Price style barn toy was the find of the day.
• Passing through Gastown one rainy evening, and the lights were looking so nice. This photo got a bit of a treatment, making a pretty crap photo something a little more interesting.
• Spent a few days in February furniture shopping looking for ideas for our new place. Stoked to buy some new stuff for this place.
• Looking across to Black Mountain from ‘Top Gun’ on Mt Strachan at Cypress Mountain. We came down the closed run with nothing other than the moonlight and headlights. We stopped to take a look over at the other side of the mountain on this foggy night. It was a pretty epic powder night, and it’s amazing to blast down the run in the dark.

Listening to:
Red Kross – Neurotica
Lungfish – Necrophones
Low – Long Division
Band of Skulls – Sweet Sour
The Saints – Know Your Product
Sparkmarker – Products and Accessories
The Raveonettes – Rarities & B-Sides
Isis – Celestial
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – I Blame the Government
Corrosion of Conformity – C.O.C. s/t & Animosity
Y&T – Mean Streak & Black Tiger
Burial – Street Halo Kindred
The Vaselines – The Way of the Vaselines

About the iPhone photo dump: I shoot a lot of photos in the average month, whether it be on my iPhone (or any of my other cameras). Sadly, most of these photos never see the light of day, and sit buried somewhere on a hard-drive. I’m using this monthly feature to set some of those photos free. You can see my full archive of iPhone Photo dumps here.

The first phone dump of 2012 – it’s full-on snow action here… Some Mt Baker, Whistler and lots of riding on the local mountain at Cypress.

• Katie got a free night at the Vancouver Westin Bayshore in Coal Harbour as part of their Wedding Fair booking for work, so we took advantage of a night downtown. It’s weird staying in a hotel in your own city… but anyway, here’s the view from our room down into the pool and harbour.
• Just a neat concrete texture… and some screws poking out of it… I just like the feel of it, and the off-brown colour of the concrete is different.
• Mt Baker – epic as it always is. This isn’t Mt Baker itself, this is actually the next mountain over in the range.
• Driving around in Maple Falls, Washington we came across this duck, a few chickens, a cat and a rabbit all playing together in a ditch. Weren’t able to get them all in one picture, they were moving around pretty fast chasing the cat. Not something you see every day.
• Pat Moore x Slayer snowboard, a colab with Forum Snowboards – I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this board until I came across it in person at a friend’s place. It looks pretty hot, a job well done.
• “It pays to look well” – words to remember on this cool old-school barber shop pole at the barber shop in Maple Falls, WA.
• Lunch at Mt Baker, a sourdough bread bowl filled with delicious, meaty chili. I could go for that again right now. Or anytime really.
• Night shot of downtown Vancouver from the balcony of Westin Bayshore. I guess it looked better when you’re looking out the actual window, but I’ve never seen Vancouver from that view before. A tourist in your own city…
• The new Raven Hut Lodge at Mt Baker is pretty awesome – this is where that amazing chili on the left came from. Now I’m thinking about that chili again…

Listening to:
Clutch – Blast Tyrant (reissue)
Rival Schools – Pedals (Deluxe Edition and Remixes)
Lamb of God – Resolution
Skunk Anasie – Wonderlustre
Aesthesys – Camera Obscura
The Big Pink – Future This
Pixies – Pixies at the BBC / Bossanova / Complete ‘B’ Sides
Nada Surf – The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy
Deconstruction – Deconstruction s/t and 1993 Demos
Destroyer – Kaputt
M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Dwarves – Dwarves Must Die
Lungfish – Necrophones
McRad – F.D.R. / Absence Of Sanity
Isis – Wavering Radiant
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine – 1992: The Love Album

About the iPhone photo dump: I shoot a lot of photos in the average month, whether it be on my iPhone (or any of my other cameras). Sadly, most of these photos never see the light of day, and sit buried somewhere on a hard-drive. I’m using this monthly feature to set some of those photos free. You can see my full archive of iPhone Photo dumps here.