The First Photos Skateboard Photographer Search wrapped this week with a photo show at the Red Bull 381 Projects space in Toronto on Tuesday night, and a private photo shoot for our winner, Mike Helfrich, at The Rail skatepark, with Vans team riders Antoine Asselin, Adam Greene and Jesse Landen.

You can read a very entertaining account of Mike's experience here, which summarizes his whirlwind two-day Toronto experience. As a quickie highlight, let's just say that Mike's a great guy and a very talented photographer; everyone who met and hung out with him was hyped. And as a bonus fascinating fact, Mike lives in Kelowna, BC, but was actually born and raised in San Dimas, California. And San Dimas, as Color's Sandro Grisson astutely pointed out after meeting Mike, is where the movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure took place.

One of Mike's photo's from the shoot. Antoine Asselin, backtail.

The First Photos show included not only all the winning images from the contest, but a cross-section of photos from the following pro photographers: Michael Burnet, Scott Pommier, French Fred, Ryan Allan, Gordon Nicholas, Brian Caissie, Shane Hutton, Rich Odam, Dylan Doubt, Terry Worona, Dan Mathieu, Bart Jones, Harry Gils, Jody Morris, Tobin Yelland, Bob Kronbauer, and Jeff Comber. All of the photos showcased a "first" of some sort for the photographer, and the prints were sold to benefit the Contributor skateboard charity.

When the photo show wrapped around 11-ish, everyone keen to keep partying headed over the local bar 751 (where DJ Dan Arget's Skate And Destroy night was going down) for the Toronto premiere of the Dimestore video. If you had a hangover the next day, don't blame us.

A huge thanks goes out to everyone who entered a photo in the First Photos contest. Over 350 photos were entered and uploaded to Push, and you can see them all here. Congrats to overall winner Mike along with all of our category winners, and a sincere thanks to our judges Brian Caissie, Dylan Doubt and Bob Kronbauer, who had a tough time picking our the best shots among so many amazing entries.

Mega-thanks to Sandro Grisson and Color Magazine (where you'll see the winning photos printed), Bobby Gascon from Vans, Antoine Asselin, Adam Greene and Jesse Landen, Bob Kronbauer and Clubmumble.com, Annie Lam and Contributor, Red Bull 381 Projects for hosting the show, Toronto Image Works for printing the photos, Piero DelBianco for opening up The Rail skatepark early for us, Steamwhistle for helping out with beer, all the great skate shops across Canada who hung our posters and gave out our flyers, and the awesome servers, caterers and door staff who ran the night for us. And the final thanks deservedly goes out to First Photos project manager Lyndsey Westfall, for her endless hard work and efforts to make this thing fly.

Keep an eye out for another edition of First Photos in the near future and check out all the party shots here.