happy canada day

I had some fun today and shot a ton of photos.
It started with a basketball game in the driveway, on to a slippy slide on the lawn, and then off for a walk downtown to take in some canada day events. Oh, and photographed my friend and son taking apart two ride on lawn mowers.
So as i mentioned i have a ton of photos ready to post. I will be adding daily for the next little while.
I really enjoyed last months black and white theme and thought i would continue it for awhile. I will let the images decide.
The shot above is from our walk downtown today. I saw this kid do an amazing jump on his skateboard in front of his friends. I did the stop, watch, and walk away, when i noticed that he was heading up for another run. I rushed back and told him to hang on a sec. I did a test shot for exposure, set the focus, and put it on continous high speed motor drive. This was the first image of the series and it ended perfectly with him landing the jump on his board. He went through the faces of his friends however and i do wish that i had gotten as low as possible. Would have been neat to have him over their heads.
Part of my reasoning for shooting lots today is that i am trying to change my style a bit. This photo is not much of a change but it may take awhile. I want to add more movement and candidness in to my shots. We will see what happens.
In photoshop i put a much darker layer of the image on top of the original exposure and then masked out the people in the shot. I wanted everything in the image darker than it was except the people. I also put a bit of a vignette on it.
Happy Canada Day to you all.