I’ve been shooting quite a lot of photos with Kanya Spani lately, he’s such a good skater and all round cool guy to hang out with.  I shot this photo of him doing an Ollie over this rail to frontside crooked grind.  I’m actually not sure what it’s called to be honest!  Dressed as a sailor from the Halloween party from the night before and with minimal sleep, he makes it look totally effortless!

These are some photos that I shot of Elliot Sloan at the Maloof Money Cup that was just held recently in Kimblery, South Africa.  I think Elliot is the only pro very skater ever to come out of New York, or at least one of the only, I can’t quite remember!  Either way, his skating and style on the vert ramp had me stoked!  Check him out!

I’ve always struggled with shooting panning shots of moving subjects!  I decided that a great place to practice this technique is at Nollie Faith in downtown Johannesburg.  The kids are constatnly skating up and down the street, all you need to do is find a good spot and wait for them to come zooming by!  These are 2 of my favourite shots taken at Nollie Faith while practising my technique.  There will definitely be more to come!

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the downtown area of Johannesburg with all the local skaters.  After a long shoot the other day, we all headed to a random street where everyone started playing ‘skate’.  It was amazing to just watch these guys throw tricks down like they were nothing!  I love Bergen’s style, he does swith stance tricks just as easy as regular ones!

Sam thought it would be funny to balance his skateboard on his head, like a traditional Zulu.  I thought it would make a cool photograph.

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.

I first met Tim at an exhibition I was doing last December, we chatted for a brief moment about some photography stuff and he showed me some of his photos on his phone.  Months later, I was skating the local skate park close to my house and saw him there, carving through the park with the unmistakable style of someone that has been familiar with a skateboard their entire life.  We have since then skated together many times and shared many laughs.  I shot these photos of Tim doing a Melon Grad over his Vespa last Friday, he broke himself and couldn’t skate the rest of the weekend but I’m sure he’ll agree that it was well worth it!  Tim is also an amazing wedding photographer!

Check out Tim’s Photography work at www.timmoolmanphotography.co.za. 

I’ve been shooting an article for Session magazine for the last couple of months, it’s a feature on Bergen Nielson.  While out and about on a Sunday afternoon, searching for spots we came across this bank to wall thingy.  I didn’t get a shot of Bergen on it but instead, Sam Khumalo…  Rather large wall ride to fakie!