I recently had a person tell me he actually liked my writing, so I figure I'm going to write about the two thing I love most in the world. Skateboarding and photography. This is the first in a series of posts about my history in the sport of skateboarding, and the art of photography. This mentioned person is the type of person that doesn't feel particularly passionate about anything and because of that, it made me really proud when he mentioned my writing. We weren't even on the topic. He generally bums me out about any projects I'm working on and if I wasn't as strong as I am, I'd probably take everything he says to heart and just give up on everything. Thankfully I know to take everything he says with a grain of salt and just ignore most of what he says. Not this time. So here we go.
If it wasn't for skateboarding, I might have never found a passion for photography. Some might argue that the reason I got into photography in the first place was because of the fact I was taking pictures of my friends skateboarding and thus, only into photography for that reason. In the past 8 years, however, my photography has blossomed into a beautiful career that make me truefully happy. In fact, the only time I feel happy and free is when I'm shooting photos, or skateboarding. When I can do both, all the better. Only recently has my skateboard photography made a mark on the world and thus, made me the happiest person in the world.
I first became aware of skateboarding photography when I was in 8th grade. At the time, I was busy stealing my moms video camera and my friends and I would go jump into the buses of our neighbors. We'd also do some pretty illegal things, and while I was approached by police and the property owners when I was 12 years old, those stories aren't important right now. So yeah, back to the photography, or at this point in my life, the videography.
Any time I'd bring the video camera out, my friends would get a little paranoid, but ultimately they thought it was awesome we could go back and watch the goofy shit we did at a later time. We could go out, jump in the bushes, or perhaps streak across a busy intersection with our pants around our ankles, then go home, smoke some pot, and laugh til we cried while watching our evidence caught on camera. It was a pretty stupid idea to capture all the borderline felonies on camera, but we thought it was awesome.
(It's important to note that I used artistic expression while using the term "borderline felonies", everything we did was a misdemeanor at best. We were also minors, and I'm pretty sure there is a statute of limitations on that shit.)
One night, a couple of my skateboarding buddies who didn't hang out with us on a regular basis were around, and I brought out the video camera. One of the first thing one of them did was hop on their board, crouch down, and started pointing the camera up.
"See, this is how they film skateboarding. They ride their board, get down real low and point it up. Some of the cameras have a handle so they can hold it better", he said.
I'm not sure why that always stuck with me, but to this day, I remember exactly everything that happened at that moment. He was riding a Birdhouse blue and white team deck, and wearing blue pants that zipped off into shorts, super cool.
I had only watched a couple of skate videos up til that point, but I never really payed attention to anything other than the skating. I never owned any videos of my own, so I was at the mercy of said friend who owned what I thought, at the time, was literally every skate video ever made. In the following weeks we watched Girl's "Mouse", Birdhouse's "The End", and CKY2K, which had come out the week before, so it further solidified my notion that filming our semi-illegal antics was the right thing to do, but it was important to add skating into the mix. After all, if the police weren't chasing us for ding dong ditching people, they were kicking us out of skate spots. This was RIGHT before "Jackass" premiered on MTV, and once it did, my friends and I knew we were on the cusp of something great.
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