Melinda
03-28-2009, 12:17 AM
Skateboarding growing up was just another thing kids did. To me, it was a sport like any other. A few years ago, the movie "Lords of Dogtown" hit the theatres and I was dragged along to see it. I didn't expect to, but I absolutely loved it. Believe it or not, it's now one of my favorite movies.
Last night while flicking channels, I came across a documentary called "DogTown and Z-Boys" which was all about the real people described in the Lords of DogTown movie. I was stunned at how accurate the movie was to what really happened back in the 70's, but it made sense that the movie wasn't bastardized since one of the three big players is now a film maker and had a pretty good hand in the movie. He also put together this documentary.
Anyways, as we see in the movie and also in this documentary, there was one guy who always had a camera in his hand. He was shown shooting the guys skating, often at really creative angles and vantage points. I never really gave it much thought until last night. They showed tons of the photographs he took over those years, and clips from the articles he wrote about them. Two words came to mind: absolutely phenominal. Now I can totally see how skateboarding can be turned into an artform.
I went on google to see if this guy has a website. No such luck based on what I could find, but I did come across these; articles he wrote back in the day about this crew as well as photos he took. Don't me mislead by the bylines, he had his real name under his photos and two different pen names for articles, but they are all him. Being a writer myself, I think his writing approach is second to none. As a photographer, my jaw dropped seeing some of the shots he got of these 11-13 year old kids. Check out the links for yourself, he's awesome
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/aspects.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/fef.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/style.html
http://www.angelfire.com/indie/dogtown/frontier.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/sod.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/truth.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/dogs.html
There are a lot of really incredible photographs not in these articles, just google Craig Stecyk.
Last night while flicking channels, I came across a documentary called "DogTown and Z-Boys" which was all about the real people described in the Lords of DogTown movie. I was stunned at how accurate the movie was to what really happened back in the 70's, but it made sense that the movie wasn't bastardized since one of the three big players is now a film maker and had a pretty good hand in the movie. He also put together this documentary.
Anyways, as we see in the movie and also in this documentary, there was one guy who always had a camera in his hand. He was shown shooting the guys skating, often at really creative angles and vantage points. I never really gave it much thought until last night. They showed tons of the photographs he took over those years, and clips from the articles he wrote about them. Two words came to mind: absolutely phenominal. Now I can totally see how skateboarding can be turned into an artform.
I went on google to see if this guy has a website. No such luck based on what I could find, but I did come across these; articles he wrote back in the day about this crew as well as photos he took. Don't me mislead by the bylines, he had his real name under his photos and two different pen names for articles, but they are all him. Being a writer myself, I think his writing approach is second to none. As a photographer, my jaw dropped seeing some of the shots he got of these 11-13 year old kids. Check out the links for yourself, he's awesome
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/aspects.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/fef.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/style.html
http://www.angelfire.com/indie/dogtown/frontier.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/sod.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/truth.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/dtown/dogs.html
There are a lot of really incredible photographs not in these articles, just google Craig Stecyk.