FDR Park_5
Since 1992, master photographer, filmer, skater and cyclist has helped to shape the visual identity of the brands that compose Deluxe Distribution, the current home of Antihero, Real, Krooked, Spitfire Wheels, and Thunder and Venture trucks. Each part of Deluxe has its own distinct personality and aesthetic, but there’s a unified sentiment that binds them, creating something greater than just a home for product. Deluxe is core skateboarding – encapsulating the authenticity that other brands aspire to – and something that can’t be manufactured or recreated.
As Deluxe’s official photographer, has focused his lens on some of the most important and creative talents in the business, canonising their contributions to skating. But real ability – more than simply capturing the highest level of skating at the perfect moment – is to translate the spirit and energy of skateboarding on film.
It takes a certain kind of personality to get the most out of skateboarding’s nomadic and fiercely independent motley crew, becoming a part of the equation, not just ‘the guy with the camera’. And has perfected the craft – part culled from his teachers and peers, part an intuitive skill that fills each frame with the decisive moment. Both photography and skateboarding have wrestled through significant periods of change in the last decade, but the 42-year-old from Marin County, now based in San Francisco, is not phased. There is no replacement for a life of experience.
Were you interested in photography before skating?
I was. My parents weren’t professional photographers, but they were always taking photos – family portraits and Cub Scout outings and stuff. Our high school had an open dark room, so my dad would go there and make prints. I was always surrounded by really nice, hand-developed black-and-white prints as a kid… If my Mom shot off a roll of film on her Kodak Instamatic camera, she’d always let me shoot the last six frames. So, I’d tool around, shooting pictures of my skateboard or my cat.
What was your first published photograph?
It was an A-1 Meats Wheels ad of Ray Simmonds. It was a three-frame sequence and some other stuff. He was riding for H-Street back then too.
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Of course, he was “the guy who ollied over the ladder.
Ha, yeah he was insane. Ray was so determined – it was really rad. He was one of the first kids to really stress out when he was trying a trick; way before Jeremy Klein focused his board in Rubbish Heap. There was this jump ramp called The Lizard, which was eight-foot-long and four-foot-wide and he used it to try and jump over this car the long way. He couldn’t do it, so he went into this kid’s garage, grabbed an extension chord and a saw, and cut his board in half; right through the rails and everything. It was fucking amazing.
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So you were in the heart of H-Street then, later, San Francisco when it was the epicentre of street skating. What got you pursuing photography instead of being sponsored for skating?
I always brought my camera everywhere and shot anything. I loved doing that… My friends would film for the H-Street videos and we also filmed some stuff for Sick Boys, and they’d premiere those videos at the local college. At those premieres Bryce Kanights would do slide shows of his photographs and talk about them, so that was rad. I skated pretty hard back then, but I wasn’t focused on getting sponsored. Another big influence was going into Fogtown, which later became Concrete Jungle and seeing all the prints on the wall, shot by Luke Ogden and Tobin Yelland; Steve Caballero skating vert in San Jose and stuff. Seeing those images as a little kid was amazing, it made me want to get a fish-eye lens and shoot like them.
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Your job is to go out and document skating, but what’s it like when you’re on a trip and you want to shoot a portrait after someone’s slam, after being in a van for weeks?
I’m very careful how I do it, because a camera can be very invasive at times. There’s stuff that I’d like to shoot, but I don’t, because people need their space. Other times, I shoot a photo, knowing it’s going to be important later. You can’t just fucking barge – you’ve got to give people space when you feel it’s appropriate. I’ll push it when I don’t think it’s going to be an issue and if it is, they’ll say something and I’ll back off.
People are becoming more desensitised to things because everyone’s got their phones. That’s one thing I don’t like on a trip, is everyone using their point-and-shoots and phones all the time, because it wears out their tolerance for having a camera in their face. Even if it’s my job to document, I’m still an outsider, it wears on people. On one day, for one trick, you could have a few photographers, a filmer and someone’s friends, all documenting the same thing. It can be too much, so I try to treat them all like sacred moments, not just take as much as I can from a fucking moment. It’s a team process.