Motion on Film: Skateboard Photography

"I'm going to drop into the bowl over there and then ride up the wall to that corner then come around," said Forrest Johnson, friend, collaborator, and lifelong skateboarder, "Where will you post up for the shot?" He was drawing an imaginary line with his finger as we visualized the plan for capturing a skate session in the bowl of the Monmouth skate park.

"I'm thinking on that edge," I pointed to the far corner of the bowl that butted up against a steep slope of grass. I wanted a good vantage point to capture to drama of the skateboard catching some air.

If you were anything like me as a teenager, it was nearly impossible to miss the blatant influence of ‘00’s skate culture: Thrasher, Bam Margera’s young wealthy nihilism, Tony Hawk’s Underground, and X Games. Thrasher, Juice, and Transworld were setting the tone and essentially wrote the manual for how skating and extreme sports were documented in mainstream culture. Sweepingly wide angles, utility compositions, filters, and lighting effects. 

A photographic genre I always found visually interesting but felt in contrast from my style of photography. 

In late 2023, I acquired my first film camera — well, my first film camera of my adult life. Growing up, film point-and-shoot cameras were ubiquitous and I was feverishly interested in DSLRs when I started down my creative photography path as a young adult.

Around April or May 2024, I was really starting to find my groove with film. I had two cameras in my arsenal: a Canon AE-1 Program and a RETO Ultra Wide and Slim, both of which I incorporated into my planning process for my big photo projects for the upcoming summer. While brainstorming one of the first and most promising ideas I came up with was a skate session with Forrest. I was beyond stoked when he agreed to a photoshoot. 

The morning of the session was a textbook-perfect day for skating, the pavement was dry, very little wind, and the skate park was empty. I showed up with a freezer bag packed full of film and loaded a roll of HP5 into the RETO and a roll of ProImage 100, followed by two rolls of StreetPan 400 into the AE-1 with a 50mm lens. Confidently nestled into place at the edge of the bowl.

It wasn’t until Forrest dropped in for the first time that I realized that I was out of my depth with the tools I had on hand and more than anything this skate session was going to be a learning opportunity for me.

The advantage of using a digital camera in action situations is that you can take thousands of shots to get a handful of usable images to make up for the poorly timed shutter triggers and mistakes you make along the way. Take some test shots, review, and adjust accordingly. When he started whizzing by my head I had no choice but just to try to keep up. The next 20 minutes were a blur of ducking, diving, advancing the frame, anticipating focus, and firing the shutter.

I learn best when I just jump in the deep end and it’s either sink or swim — or stall out in Twin Cities’ rush hour traffic if we’re talking about that day I learned how to ride a motorcycle on a cross-country road trip, but that’s a story for a different time.

The advantage that I had that day was that it was sunny without the mention of a cloud. I could crank my shutter speed all the way up on my AE-1 which helped in capturing some crisp and calculated moments. While the RETO on the other hand allowed me to get creative with dangerous angles while keeping my face out of the path of a runaway skateboard. 

I shot through four rolls of film that day and ended up with about 25 usable images and only about eight or ten that I’d consider sharing on Instagram.  

The StreetPan 400 was great for this application, in my opinion. Its natural dramatic contrasty quality made the images feel precise and moody, giving editorial vibes. I get a sense of importance when I look at those images as if they could be part of a larger story.

The ProImage 100 gave me vibrant saturated colors in this application that made the images feel more closely related to a traditional style of skateboard photography. The HP5 in the RETO, which is featured as the hero image above, captured the motion beautifully while making forms appear muddied and abstract. 

When I received my scans from the developer I had instantly fallen in love with the whole batch. There was such variety in the results because of the combination of filmstocks and cameras used but also the outcome of the experience gave me so much confidence as a photographer. There were so many ideas in the collection that I played with, and to see some mastery of my analog tools throughout the session was invigorating. Finally, I created skate photography from my point of view.

It was such a cool experience. There’s no doubt that I’ll be on the hunt for more action sessions come spring. However, I believe what I most appreciated about the experience was that it was a chance to learn a new skill that built confidence in using my new(ish) tools. The session forced me out of my comfort zone and in return I was able to more fully grasp how to use a manual analog camera effectively.  

Chao,

KM