How did you get started with photography?
I sort of knew about optics through birdwatching, from when I was 12 or 13, then when I was 15 I went on a trip to Russia and a guy had a Canon A1, and my friend had an Olympus Trip. I knew what a camera was but I couldn’t afford it, but then an art teacher lent me a camera when I was 16. I didn’t know what I was doing but I knew I wanted to be a photographer. I got access to it when I was 16, but it wasn’t until 18 when I got my first camera, and I was straight in shooting skate and surf photos that summer.
It was all black and white, no colour, and it was hit-and-miss. It worked, but there was no control of the aperture or the shutter. It was all on auto. It came out, and it looks good now because of the time, but it was this constant thing that I was never happy with. Photos would come back soft, I couldn’t get the punch I wanted, and especially in the darkroom, everything was always flat. It took ages to get anywhere near where I wanted to be. I had a 28mm, I never had a fisheye, and all that you shouldn’t do with photography, I did, because I couldn’t afford anything. It was all shot 28mm from the top.
I got a darkroom within the year. I got an enlarger and my dad converted the bathroom to a darkroom. He made a big screen and put trays into the bath, and the enlarger was on top of the washing machine. I’d be in there hours every night, printing stuff in the darkroom.
Where were you first published?
My friend Twiss—one of the early Langley boys—did this zine called Rat Bite, and straight away all the photos were going into the zine. We teamed up and we were doing editorial together, and everything I shot pretty much got used. Then I started doing my own zines, and everything was constantly cut up, pasted and put into zines. It was a weird editorial flow, but it was a good one because it put me in good stead for later on.
Josh Kalis
How did you start with RAD?
Twiss was giving the zines out at ESA contests, and Tim would have known Twiss from him being a high-placed amateur, and he would have known me because I was coming with Twiss and Tomsk and Arwyn Davies from ’82 or ’83. But I didn’t have a photo in RAD until the 1988 photo special, and by that time Tim was shooting in Europe and publishing photos by Spike Jonze and Tod Swank and the standard of RAD was really high so my stuff just wasn’t up to par. I just didn’t have the lenses, and it took a while for all that to fall into place.
I went out to Visalia Skate Camp in ’89, and lasted about two weeks. I was over it; I didn’t like the camp counsellors and I got out of it, but for two weeks I was just shooting. Omar Hassan was there, Wade Speyer came through, Todd Congelliere was there, Gonz came up for a day, Donger, so many people. Mike Ternasky kinda ran the camp so all the H-Street guys. Matt Hensley wasn’t there, but everyone else was. It was a good step into the States.
I wanted to go to Australia in ’92, so I saved and saved. My mum was always encouraging, and she said she had this insurance thing on me and she could give me £800 if I saved the other £800. She wouldn’t pay for the full flight but she said she’d give me half if I could get half. So I saved up half, and I went to Visalia on the way out, for two weeks, then flew to Australia for a few months, then flew back to SF for two weeks on the way back.
By that point I had a Canon T90 with a motor drive, and on the way out I shot an interview with Tom Knox, and sent it to TLB. I ended up being down to ten dollars in Australia, and I phoned my mum to say I’d be coming home, with my tail between my legs. She told me there was a cheque there from Tim, and that it was for £600, and that saved me. That meant I could stay in Australia. That cheque was completely life-changing and that was the start of doing editorial for RAD.
What made the Canon T90 the skateboard photographer’s camera of choice?
It was the first digital camera ever, because it had an LCD in it. It was manual, it was a film camera, but you could change the shutter speed and the film digitally, and it had a 1/250 flash sync, and the only other camera that had that at the time was a Nikon FM2 but loads of people were already on Canon. Grant Brittain and those guys shot in bright light, but we didn’t really need that because things were quite dark here.
I was in Carlsbad and I bought the fisheye for $500, which was about a grand, and when I got back I couldn’t fucking believe it. Grant was always, ‘You’ve got to get good glass’, and it was just night and day when these photos came in. They looked unbelievable. From that point on, pretty much everything I shot with that camera got printed.
Lance Mountain
So when you came back, you worked for RAD.
Tim was bringing me up and down, processing film and taking care of me. I’d do these little write ups of trips, and then when I’d go in the office Simon Evans would be there, Gavin Hills would be there, and they’d all be typing away on computers like little schoolboys and Tim’s making tea and keeping everybody in line. I don’t think we were naughty but we kind of were mischievous. Tim was definitely like the teacher and bless him, he never lost his rag on us. He was always encouraging, because we, primarily, were his staff.
I don’t even bear to think what the skateboard scene in the UK would have been without TLB. He was out there tirelessly, he didn’t take a day off, he was doing it constantly. When you do a magazine like that, there’s no days off, he was out shooting everything. And he’s Editor in Chief, and Managing Editor, by default. He was probably selling ads too, he was doing everything.
What about working in the States?
I was already working for Thrasher—I’d done a summer at Thrasher—and I’d met Grant at Transworld the year before and I knew that was where I wanted to try to be, and at that point you had to freelance for everyone to make it work.
A New Deal UK tour that I managed was a big break, and Thomas Campbell came over for three months, and I learnt a lot off him.
I did a contest for Thrasher and it came out great; I got paid but no ‘thank you’, and I got treated like shit so I knew that wasn’t going to work. In the summer of ’93 I met Grant and Dave Swift at Münster, and I said, “Look, it’s not working, I need to come and work for you”, so they told me to do a Carl Shipman interview. After the Europe contests I went straight to Northampton and me and Carl did a Pro Spotlight in two weeks, and then that was my launch into America, and I got a job in ’94.
I went out, and Berra wasn’t working out—he was fucking about a little bit and not really taking his job seriously—so I took Berra’s position as Assistant Editor, and I was a staff photographer too, so I got two massive jobs, two really hard jobs to get. It was being in the right place at the right time. Grant and Dave were above me, but I was right at the top, basically.
I got really good friends with Hensley, too. I met Matt in the summer of ’93, and I jumped in with him. I was with Matt for a lot of stuff, and he lived round the corner. I met Hensley, Dyrdek, Rick Howard, Dune, all the Stereo guys, and then it wasn’t long before I pretty much met everyone. Back then if you liked somebody, it was up to you to put them in the magazine. So if you liked somebody you could go and shoot them. I liked Scott Johnston, so I shot a Pro Spotlight with Scott Johnston. That was my sort of thing, shooting Spotlights and doing the editorial.
The magazine was quite small then; it was monthly, and it was on 124 pages, then when it went to 480 it went fucking massive quickly.
How much were you able to decide who to put in the mag, and how much of it was related to how much advertising that dude’s sponsors were paying for?
It was nothing to do with sponsors, it was just if I liked you, you were in the magazine. Mike Daher was in it. If I like the way you skated it’d start with a Check Out, then you’d build up to a Spotlight. There were only twelve Pro Spotlights a year so they were a big thing for us. And they were a big thing for the pro as well.
Danny Way
You shot a lot of DC people.
When DC came out Ken Block really sorted the guys out. He upped the money, and he took care of people a little bit more because photographers weren’t getting that much at the time so he definitely stepped the game up for us.
I was going out with the DC guys all the time, and that’s when Huf would come down, when Scott Johnston would come, Dyrdek would come, and those guys rode for DC. Colin and Danny I shot all the time, Caine Gayle I shot all the time.
Something that stood out from looking through your archive was that there were so many alternate angles of everything. You were moving around a lot when you were shooting.
Always move. I’d go big first. If it was a rail I’d always start fish at the bottom to make it big, if it was more landscape-y I’d go further away. I’d go big then I’d come in long. If it was a ramp I’d go to the bottom of the ramp with the fisheye and then I’d do it black and white, so you’d have all these different options. Have it long, have it fisheye, have it colour, have it black and white, do it vertical, do it horizontal, so you’ve covered as much as you can so you know that something out of that roll will get used. You just cover the bases. And that’s not a lot of photos, you can just move and do it.
Everyone uses flash now and I’m not really a fan of the 2:1 flash. Everyone does it. I like it when it looks natural. Everything just looks the same now. With Dan Sturt, black and white used to be an art, and to me, that’s long gone. You should be able to make a slam look good.
Did you ever shoot anything intentionally for the cover?
All the fucking time. Every day. First of all it was for ads - don’t put him in the middle, put him to the side so the shoe can go somewhere. Then I’d always try and shoot anything for the cover, and if it didn’t go on the cover it'd be in Sightings, or a Check Out, because the vertical shot is an easy one to fit in the magazine so you’ve got more chance of it being published, really.
When I was photo editing, I’d do it with Grant in the morning, and I’d pick my own stuff. Grant would have his stuff, which was always fucking impeccable, and then he’d pick apart my stuff and help critique it. There was an hour in Grant’s office every morning, so what we’d do is we’d go out and shoot five rolls, drop it at the lab, and the lab would drop it off at 9am the next morning so your day would be there, all ready to go, and you’d do the same again. It was a constant turnover of slides coming in.
Mark Gonzales
When did you first meet Mark Gonzales?
I met Mark in maybe ’85, and then I shot him for Thrasher in ’89. He was over on the New Deal Distribution tour in ’92, but I’d never really been close to Mark. Dan Field who ran Girl—he was the manager of it all—was super best friends with Mark, and he used to advise Mark. He got Mark on adidas. Mark was living with Dan in LA so we hooked up again.
I did a tour with DVS in the summer of ‘98, and then in the winter I talked to adidas and they told me Mark was going to go and do this show, and they asked if I wanted to go and shoot it. That was two weeks with Mark, and he did the museum in Monchengladbach, and then the museum in Köln, for a book called Broken Poems that he was promoting. Cheryl Dunn documented it really well, and I was there to document it as well, and it was nice the way it all came out.
Can you talk about Matt Hensley?
You know when you have an idea stuck in your head about people, about what you wish they’d be like? Matt Hensley is exactly like you’d want him to be like. He’s been such a good friend to me. We have so much in common, from ska music to skateboarding to carpentry, and we’ve talked every month in the six years since I’ve been away. If I don’t get in touch he’ll track me down and find out what I’m doing. Matt’s heavily involved in music and he’s built a little studio; he’s doing new reggae albums and he’s just been a fucking inspiration to me. He’s a great golfer, a great pool player, whatever he does he just goes in 100% and makes it the best he can possibly make it. You can’t fault it.
He’s helped so many people along the way, from being Team Manager of Plan B onwards. He helped Rodney Mullen get out on the street—Rodney went to live with Matt—and all these monumental changes in street skating, Matt was something to do with it. He’s Mike Carroll’s favourite, he’s Rick Howard’s favourite, he’s the dude.
Matt Hensley
Photographers had their own people who they’d shoot, right?
There were unwritten rules. Like you’d never shoot Tony Hawk because Grant shot him. Everyone had their own boy, and you didn’t step over that line, really. It was just out of respect; you had your own guys and everybody would claim certain people and that would be the way it was.
Was Chad Muska that guy for you?
Yeah, 100%. Tom Penny too, and Geoff Rowley, to an extent, but I wasn’t the only person they shot with. I was the only person that Chad shot with from ’94 to ’98. There was that four year period of shooting with him again and again and again.
What was shooting with Chad like?
At first he was in San Diego, on the streets, then he moved to a tiny little apartment in Huntington Beach and he started blowing up. We’d go and meet him in the morning, drive all round LA, go to Huntington, and we’d go on trips together. That all finished in ’98 when I came back to the UK, and then in 2000 I became the Circa staff photographer, so I jumped in again, on the career, after two years away from it. Then I was with him all the time again, doing Circa stuff. That was awesome because I didn’t really have a career when I went back, then all of a sudden I had Muska, Jamie Thomas, Mark Appleyard, Colt Cannon… That was good.
I was really good friends with Lee Dupont, so through Lee we became the Zero guys, and I shot loads of Zero stuff. Not so much Ellington or Greco, but all the Zero kids in the period after, and loads of stuff with Jamie.
Karl Watson
"I was out at EMB in ’93, hanging about with Jagger and shooting Dan Drehobl, and I ended up close to a couple of guys. I shot Scott Johnston’s Pro Spotlight, and then I got close to all the Mad Circle guys through him. It was just good times."
What was your role at Transworld when you came back?
They worked out a new deal for me when I came back in 2000, and I was Online Editor, but I lasted about two months doing that, because I just wanted to come back to the mag, so I came back as Senior Photographer, then Assistant Editor. The magazine was huge at this point and the web stuff was just an afterthought. They had big intentions for it but the skateboard mag was a cash cow, it was making a lot of money and all the focus was on print, really.
What were you shooting with by this point?
I’d gone on to a Nikon FM2. I had this titanium FM2, 16mm, fisheye, manual, and I had an F4, this state-of-the-art film camera. I didn’t use a lot of lenses but by this point I’d started shooting with a Mamiya C330, and I had a Hasselblad too. I was shooting medium format a lot. All sorts of stuff. You name it, I tried it. The only thing I didn’t do was plate cameras; I tried it but it was too much hassle.
Lennie Kirk
"That was the first switch 5.0 I’d ever seen on a rail. I’d never seen anyone do that before, and Lennie Kirk was at the forefront of switch. Salman Agah and loads of other guys were too, but Lennie definitely took it another step."
How did you find out the staff were leaving to do The Skateboard Mag?
Hensley told me. Someone had told him that they were bouncing, so he told me to get ready. I kind of knew it when Swift came in and told the staff they were leaving, and ten of them bounced. There was a two week reshuffle where I went up to Editor in Chief, and it wasn’t nice. They took all their photos, and I got flown straight to the owners Time Warner in New York because they wanted to sue them, but I managed to keep the wolves from the door. It kind of wrecked it, to be honest. All the advertising split, and in the end it hasn’t favoured anybody. It’s like when the Liberal Party split and you’ve got two useless non-entities, really.
What did you do?
I called Seu [Trinh] straight away, and he said he had this photo of Rodney that he thought was really good. That was when we did ‘Inside the Mind of Rodney Mullen’, when Seu had done the photo from under, through the perspex. He’d put washing-up liquid in to get the bubbles, and it was a really gnarly shot, and that ended up being the best selling issue of Transworld of all time. That also got Cover of the Year at Time Warner, so I got flown out to go and get that award for Seu. So even though it was a shit time, Seu completely saved me because he was constantly bringing in this new wave of World Industries riders at the time. Mike O’Meally was brilliant, and Oliver Barton too. O’Meally can be brash, but he’s passionate about it and me and Mike just got on.
Arto Saari
How did it end?
The magazine was coming down in size, ad revenue was going, and then they said I had to cut the staff. The last in were the first out, so I cut and cut and cut, and that was brutal. In the end I was over it. I was bipolar, I’d had a couple of breakdowns and lost my shit in work, they put me on probation and I jumped ship over to adidas. It was just not nice. Corporate America mixed in with all these idiots running Transworld, it was so far removed from what it was at the start.
What were you doing at adidas?
I was team managing, but it was more than team managing because the team was so big and there was so much going on. I was managing the nitty gritty of the program, really.
Rick Howard
What happened?
It took its course. It was a four or five year thing, it was super hard work and I just got burnt out on it. I had another breakdown and I couldn’t afford the insurance in America, so I just had to come back and everything went tits up, basically. What could go wrong, went wrong, and I ended up back in Swansea.
It’s been rough, but it’s been alright. I’m alright and my family are alright. It’s just a hustle like I’ve never hustled before. When you go bankrupt it means you have no money, and no money means no money. No money for a phone, no money for a computer, no money to eat. It’s a fucking grind. I haven’t bought a new piece of clothing for five years. No car, but luckily I cash-bought a little house.
We all worry that we’re not going to have money, but we’re gonna be alright. We’re gonna have food, we’re gonna have shelter and we’re not gonna be on the street if we keep it together. That was really reassuring about Swansea, that and the people. Going into pubs here and meeting all the boys and hanging out. I’m in it, and I do like that. Summer’s here, the trees are green, the sun’s out and the birds are singing. It’s beautiful here in the summer.
And you’re still shooting skateboarding.
Yeah. I’ve got a big show coming up in September at the Glynn Viv Gallery in Swansea. It’s called 360, it opens on the 12th of September, it's open for two months, and it’s a bigger installation than I’ve ever done before. It’s a real retrospective, from ’82 up to now, and there’s a lot of stuff you haven’t seen of my favourite skaters that I shot over the years. I’ve got five commissioned pieces for that, so I’ve been working on them. Rick and Katie at Exist have been like an extended new family, they’ve been amazing. I just jumped in and started going again. It’s been a long time but it’s good to be back, where I feel like I belong. I feel I’m ready to start shooting now and jump back in. I’ve got a London show planned, something big, but that’s still in its early stages.
Rob Dyrdek
You’ve got more in your archive than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life.
I can see why people burn or get rid of their shit, to get rid of the consciousness of it from their mind, but luckily I didn’t do any of that, and I’ve kept everything. Some good stuff is going to happen.
What’s one bit of photography advice you’d give?
Always overexpose everything. Never underexpose. All your black and white, all your slide, push it one stop. Overexpose it and you’ll see a world of difference. 500, 5.6.
Published in North 40