Skate

Watching this delicious skate video (directed by Spike Jonze and Ty Evans) recently inspired me to head out and take some skate photos.

There was an idea that I’d been meaning to rip off for some time, from an old PS1 skating game called Thrasher: Skate and Destroy. The loading screens showed multiple, rapidly-taken photos of a single trick, from the same angle, composed into a single image. I remembered it looking cool, and realised that I knew how to do it myself, and had everything I needed (a camera that can take fairly fast continuous shots, a tripod and Photoshop). So I had no excuse not to.

I went to the local skatepark (Exhibition Park, Newcastle) the next weekend, and had a go. The weather was surprisingly great for it, and I’m chuffed with the results:

         
(Click the pics for bigger versions on Flickr)

At first I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, as I literally just turned up, watched people do their stuff for a while, then set my camera up and started taking photos. I could’ve ended up being murdered by a horde of hooded teenagers with hard things in their hands, but thankfully they weren’t the type.

After people cottoned on, a particular group of them were really up for getting involved and doing tricks for the camera, and soon enough we were chatting about things and setting up decent shots and so on. Along with the post-processing / Photoshopping session that ensued once I was back home, it was a really satisfying day’s “work”. Would like to do something similar but more ambitious sometime.