I headed back into the city this last weekend to shoot some photos of the skate contest that Nollie Faith was putting on for the kids.  As always, I was greeted with smiles and giggles and most of the kids couldn’t wait to get in front of my lens!  The contest was a great success and I could see the joy in the kids faces and I just couldn’t believe how excited they were to see their friends competing for first and second place.  I spent most of the day shooting some portraits but also shot some pics of the contest itself.  I’ll have to split the blog posts into seperate parts as there are quite a few photos!  This is the first post.  Enjoy.

While cruising around the streets of Johannesburg recently, trying to find something worthy to skate and shoot a photograph on, we stumbled upon this rather interesting piece of sidewalk decoration.  A bath-tub from 1936 which was salvaged out of some old building in the Hillbrow area of downtown Johannesburg.  I thought it would make for some cool skate shots!  Sam did a well styled crooked grind across it while Bergen destroyed it with a Nollie Backside lip slide to big spin out!  Here are some of the still shots I took.

Johannesburg is definitely a place of diverse culture, with so many different languages and tribal back rounds, just about every person you meet has his or her own individual story of tradition and belief.  It’s an interesting place to say the least!  I’ve been going down there to meet up with the local skateboarders for the past couple weekends now trying to capture moments in time as they move about in this crazy, contrasted environment. 

A couple months back I wrote an article for COLOR MAGAZINE about an artist/friend over in California.  I have since then been trying to get more involved with doing some photography for them and getting some other articles published about the skate/art life here in South Africa.  I’ve been pretty busy with shooting photos in the downtown area of Johannesburg, with skaters and random people alike.  Trying to put together a story of life on the streets of Johannesburg.  There’s so much to photograph and interact with, so many different kinds of people and skaters, all hangin out and goin about their daily routine.  It’s an adventure in itself.  Here are some of the shots I took this last weekend.