This a small collection of skate photos that I have taken over the last 18 years, a couple of which were taken by friends. More will be uploaded when I dig them out and clean up their quality.
I have been skateboarding since some time back in 1974, I don't know what month because it just did not seem important back then to remember that detail. You skate and have a lot of fun, you learn new tricks and make a lot of new mates, skate a lot of new spots, and the future is way too obscure to think about much at all when you are only 11 years old. I wish I had photos of everything that I have witnessed over the years, but I mostly have the memories and images etched in my mind - if I take the time to think back I can capture brief hazy glimpses of days that have long passed and the fun that was had by all of us.
Skateboarding is an amazing way to spend some of your time. I have seen so many incredible tricks performed over the years, and skated at some unreal spots in NSW and Queensland. Most of these spots and tricks were never photographed - we were all way too absorbed by the adrenaline that skateboarding creates to stop and take a lot of photos. The first couple of shots were taken in 1987, during a skate session on a mini quarter pipe that I constructed way back then. The skater's nick name is "Turkey" - a good mate and one of the best amateur skaters in Newcastle at that time. All of these photos except the one of "Nutter" were taken using a Hanimex underwater camera, and I recently scanned the prints into a computer for uploading to the web.
The photos of Tony Hawk on the six foot ramp were taken at a demo at Newcastle South Skate Park in 1997. A number of other local skaters jammed with him on the street course, but the camera that I was using was a very basic consumer model, so the shots did not turn out to be that great.
The photo of the kick flip was taken using a digital camera - it is the only truly digital image in this assortment of pictures. The skater is nicknamed "Nutter" - a Lake Macquarie local who's skating has been progressing steadily over the last four or five years. In the next few months I plan to spend some time filming video and taking more skate photos for use on this part of the site. My skate video is called "Experiments In Inertia" and it will include the skating of a number of locals at my favourite "home" skate park in Croudace Bay, but as the weeks progress I will be traveling to other skate spots to capture the cleanest, most progressive skateboarding that I can find.
Skateboarding is entering an upswing. People who have been away from it for a while are skating again, and there are also a lot of new recruits discovering skateboarding. There has never been a better time to be skating than right now - there are far more skate parks, the tricks are far more advanced, and there are many different, innovative ways of thinking that are being applied to skate culture. Skateboarding is a hugely popular part of youth culture. I am always amazed by the fact that wherever you may travel and however many times you may visit a spot, you will see so many skaters that you have never seen before. When you watch a lot of them, you can see "history" in their skating that proves they have been doing it for a few years. It is more than just a brief fad to them, skateboarding has become an integral part of both their life and their identity.
Click on any of the images on the right to view an enlarged version. |
