(bell ringing) (slow music) - I think photos need to be printed.

Making a print, gives it a validity.

You know, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can hold it.

Helping start TransWorld in 1983, TransWorld Skateboarding Magazine, was when I first felt like I might have some talent and they just threw me in and we were still just coming up with everything, you know, like, how do you shoot street skating, when it came along.

You know, we had to like figure out a way to shoot street skating because we were shooting pools and ramps and they took skateboarding out into the streets.

You didn't have to have a park anymore.

The world is a skate park and the magazines, you know, we jumped right on that, you know, because it was part of new skateboarding, you know.

But it was just a hobby, you know, back in those days there was no job as skate photographer.

You know, I just was shooting my friends and the people that came through the skate ranch and, you know, you shoot your friends.

That's how everybody starts, shooting their friends and I'm sure it's that way with every photographer.

Tony would come to the park and it's like, oh, skinny Tony Hawk, he's skating.

He's good, you know.

He was just a kid, you know, I could get him to do anything.

I have a photo of him with these welding goggles on.

You don't know that 30 years later it's gonna be on Nixon billboards in Asia.

Nobody cared about skateboarding then.

You know, it was just fun.

Just kind of shooting, you know, Willy nilly, not knowing what f-stops and shutter speeds were until I changed my art major to photography.

A friend of mine, Sonny Miller, did photography and he went with me to the dark room at Palomar and there was that moment where, I want to do more of this, you know?

I like the smell of the dark room.

I liked the energy and I got addicted to it.

I was at Palomar every day when they opened until five o'clock and then I was at the skate park working and you know, slept on the pool table for eight months there.

I mean, I was like really living the life.

When things come easy, they don't have as much meaning, you know.

When I started taking photography, I took every class that they had so I would never have to say no to a job.

I went to Palomar, a two year school, for 10 years off and on, taking as many units as I could in this one field just changed my whole life.

I was able to discover my style there, you know and to hang out with other photographers who weren't skate photographers, they were just photographers.

We had little cliquey groups, you know, there's the surf skate guys over here and then there's the Ansel Adams people over here and it was really an amazing experience.

Those are still my favorite years, when I was learning everything.

If they're coming toward me, I can count.

Put the light- I think mentors and teachers are like the best thing.

So, I might put it just here.

Now I've had a lot of assistants and I always tried to teach them everything I knew 'cause you can't take it with you.

I usually shoot, you know, around 200, you know, 250.

You know, I might go blind tomorrow.

It's the fisheye.

Mine's just kind of battered.

It's gotten hit a couple of times.

(skateboards clacking) 50, I shoot product and stuff and then this is my portrait lens, it's an 85 and that's a bitchin' portrait lens and this is the 70 to 200.

Next to the fisheye I probably use this one the most.

But basically, I don't think skate photography has changed in 30 years.

You know, everything gets a little more technical lighting wise and camera wise, you know, you have instant playback, but it's all pretty much the same.

Some of my favorite photos are natural light, no artificial flash.

You know, like the Rodney Mullen silhouette photo, the pole cam photo of Chris Miller, that's all available light.

The first off-camera flashes we use just changed, you know, everything, you know, you could shoot into the sun and for magazine work, it really made things pop too.

And I mean, we ran some contents pages and I look at 'em now and I go, I can't believe I ran that 'cause it was so arty and non-skate.

You know, it was like my friend Sin with a skateboard in front of his face.

A lot of things I can't believe they let us run and we did get into scuffles at the magazine.

Every day I just see this beam of light and I go, I'd love to shoot a photo of that.

So, I got Tod Swank, who was my assistant at the time.

He just skated back and forth doing different things and he was doing nose wheelies and regular wheelies.

He did like a Superman thing and he did the push.

I mean, just pushing on a skateboard is one of the best things in the world where you just feel free and you know, so simple and basic.

I don't know if I said I wanted it as a cover or if David Carson said it, but he goes, this would make a great cover with nothing on it.

We took it to, you know, the rest of the people in the magazine and everybody hated it and things were said and I left for a couple of days and then when it came out, like the skateboard world, half the people hated it and the other half dug it, I guess and now a lot of people say it was their favorite cover.

The guy that I got into the argument with now says it's his favorite cover and I go, and I remember when it wasn't.

(low techno music) I'm delving more into the feeling of skateboarding because it's not just always about the peak action, you know?

And that's like the, Natab Kaupas photo of him landing and he's doing an ollie over the stairs.

I never ran the sequence.

I only ran the photo of him landing because I liked the way the light was and the sun and he's kind of silhouetted and he's fully compressed, his hands behind him and it all added to that one photo and there's a sequence I shot of Mark Gonzoles doing an ollie over this little gap in Oceanside and I always ran the ollie shot as a single and then I started to notice the photo as he's coming up and his foot is- the side of his foot is compressed against the front of the board and now I run that photo and it's not even the peak shot.

Like, it could be a hand gesture or they're letting go of their board early but it's like, just that little thing, you know and I've been getting more into detail, you know and how artifacts now are important in photography.

It has this validity, you know, dark room work does.

It's like handmade furniture or handmade anything, you know?

I have this photo of Dave Hackett that I shot in Japan and then the dark room tech opened up film into the light and back then I was like, oh he screwed up these pictures, but that makes it cool now because it is the dark room and that it got screwed up, you know, it was kind of cool.

I didn't really shoot skateboarding with a medium format because it was kind of hard.

You know, it was easier with 35 millimeter and then I shot three photos with that Mamiya and there's one photo and I told Tony to look at me.

I never even ran it in the magazine and I just dug it out like a couple years ago.

And back then it wasn't good enough to be in the magazine and now anything that was shot back then is good and if it happens to be a good skate photo that nobody's seen, it has even that much more meaning to it.

I had to reinvent myself after not working for a magazine for the last couple of years.

I've gone through a garage full of photos, trying to find stuff that hasn't been printed, working on a book.

I've been bringing back a lot of stuff from the dead.

Photos that I just threw them in a bin I'm finding now and I go, oh, I can fix this in Photoshop.

Nobody ever saw this photo.

So, like on Instagram, I try to run a lot of stuff that hasn't been seen.

I think it should be pretty good coming out of the camera.

So, I just look at Photoshop as the dark room.

You manipulate things in the dark room.

You know, I don't do a lot of layers and things like that, but it's kind of cool.

You know, that you can bring this stuff back from 30 years ago.

I shoot for fun now and now that there's no magazines, I always leave it up to the skater what they want to do.

- [Skater] Action shots.

- You want to get some on the hip?

Let me switch to another lens and then we'll do it.

(camera clicking) (skateboard scraping) - [Skater] Yo, watch your knee.

- Oh geez.

- Watch it, I almost got your shin, dude.

Ah, need some light injuries (mumbles).

- [Offscreen Man] Just do it.

(skateboard scraping) (camera clicking) - Okay.

You wanna look at it?

You can't tell in this light.

- Yeah.

- It's sharp.

(skateboard scraping) (camera clicking) - You're smiling.

- Yep.

- Is it good?

That looks great.

- You're good?

- That's what we were goin' for.

- What?

- Yeah, that's what we're goin' for.

- Okay, cool.

- [Skater] I like it.

- Got it.

I do my hobby for a living.

So, it seems like when people retire, they die, you know, I don't want to die.

(laughs) - [Camera Man] I hear ya.

- I mean, we're all going to die, but why rush it?

(skateboard scraping) (slow music)