Proposal for folio

For my folio i want to explore the concept of how universal skateboarding is. It is always easy to travel to a new town, city or even country and immediately make friends with people purely because they have a good kickflip or you comment on their griptape destroyed Vans. Being a skateboarder myself i have experienced this first hand and that is why i have chosen a skateboarding theme for my folio. It is an area I love to work with therefore it will be a lot of fun to do.

To convey this concept I want to photograph four or more skateboarders all doing the same tricks but all in different locations. Each photograph will hopefully have a similar layout that will easily be noticed at first glance. For each rider I would have one action shot, one portrait and one photo capturing every day live of a skateboarder (see the two photos on the right of the Cons advertisement). The style of this image is yet to be determined but easily be able to decide at the first photo shoot.

The layout for each skater, in the same order as previously mentioned can be seen in the following image. It is a pretty basic layout and will no doubt change when I start putting things together.



I have considered having my photos black and white which I believe would help make the photos look more like they are from different locations in the world although I have little experience with black and white so perhaps it would be safer not to go there.

Ideally i would like to use a fisheye lense for the action shots but unfortunately I don’t have one and my camera is a Nikon so I can’t borrow one from CIT as they have Canon lenses only. I would prefer a fisheye but it is not entirely necessary as all my skate photos so far have been with a regular lense.

The idea of having the subjects doing the same thing came from the ‘Six Squares’ section of Fully Flared, arguably skateboarding’s best video to date. It shows skateboarders of mixed nationalities doing the same thing which creates an obvious connection. This can be seen in the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NimepaXMg78

Locations I have considered have been Wodens new Eddison skatepark, Civic skatepark, the high school behind my house in Temora, inner Civic, Belconnen library steps, Temora grain depot, parliament house, Questicon and any highly graffitied back alley. I will probably find more possible sites soon as I have only recently moved to Canberra. The locations will hopefully be much different in each set of photos.

This Cons Skateboarding shoe advertisement from the March issue of Slam Skateboarding Magazine influenced the direction i want to take to end up with my final folio. I like the face that is shows more than just the trick aspect of skateboarding by collaborating other styled shots to show a story. Unfortunately, and not due to lack of trying, I cannot find the name of the photographer for this spread.