elements of skateboarding

 
I like this image mostly because it wasn’t at all set up or posed. I was actually trying to photograph the way the skateboarder’s legs and feet move with relation to the skateboard when doing a kick flip. I shot about 8 frames before the skateboarder had enough of my close proximity cramping his style and wanted to do something else. It was later when looking through the images that I decided I preferred this stationary shot to any of the action ones, and strange enough, I barely could remember taking it.

One of the things that I still find so heady about photographing kids in particular, is that element of surprise. I may go in to the photographing thinking I’m after a certain something, but then find myself being carried in an altogether different direction by the unpredictable nature of kids and the things they do. It’s because they won’t be coerced into doing things my way that I get to discover new ways of seeing. One rarely gets this kind of honesty from adults aware they are being photographed.

These moments usually happen very quickly, and I love the feeling of intuitively responding to what I’m seeing when there is no time to think it through first. To me it’s an experience much like dancing, where I allow myself to be moved along by an intoxicating, almost primal rhythm. I never tire of it.

~Cynthia