One Friday morning, my friend Joe and I and a few others were having our regular "old school skater" session at Vans Skatepark in Huntington Beach, CA when all of a sudden, we see a skater coming in with two photographers.
We suddenly realized - it's Tony Hawk.
As the photographers got set up at the deep end of the Clover Bowl, (11' section) we see Tony padding up and getting ready to skate.
We continued our session, taking turns and then Tony joined the line up and started warming up.
As legendary skate photographer J Grant Brittain started snapping off shots, I asked the other photographer what this photo shoot was for and he said: "We can't say, sorry".
And then he said: "You'll find out in a few months..."
So, here we were, taking turns, skating a pool with the legend, Tony Hawk!
It was amazing and almost felt like a dream - so surreal.
Suddenly, the photographer instinct kicked in and I decided to start documenting the scene.
I got photos of Hawk and his friend, '80's skate pro, Kevin Stabb. Here's Staab doing a mean backside air.
So I stopped skating and went to an area where I'd be out of the way of the photographers and started shooting.
A few months later, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 game was released and look at the cover...
THAT'S what they were shooting - the cover of his next video game.
AND... I believe one of the shots I got was of the same moment (same shot, but from a different angle) as the shot on the actual cover that they ended up using!
That was epic.
As we headed out to get some fish tacos, we talked about how amazing it was.
When I told my son-in-law about this, he said: "That would be like playing basketball with Michael Jordan!"
I thought to myself, "Yeah, kinda!"