Danny Evans
Danny Evans is a jersey photographer who did a project on the skateboarders from the island. Capturing the grit, scars and tattoos. This has inspired to me to my own project on the skateboarders in jersey.
Danny Evans is a freelance photographer with over 18 years of experience. He focuses on commercial photography, especially advertising and fashion. His work has been featured in magazines and on billboards in places like Singapore, Australia, Europe, and the UK. Danny is based in Jersey, where he runs his own studio. His unique lighting and set designs make him stand out, and he’s also known for working on fashion shoots for Gallery Magazine in Jersey. In 2023, Danny created an exhibition called “FLUX” at ArtHouse Jersey. This project combined photography, film, and tech to show off sustainable fashion designs from local and international creators. It was all about mixing art and technology to explore modern fashion. Danny started out using old-school film cameras like the Nikon FM but has moved on to advanced digital equipment, including the high-tech Phase One camera system. He’s always upgrading his gear to make sure his work is top-notch. Overall, Danny is passionate about turning everyday settings into amazing photos and is super dedicated to his craft. This has made him popular with both local businesses and big brands.
Pete Thompson
Pete Thompson was a skateboard photographer for 13 years in the 90s – capturing the boom of a huge movement without realising. He worked for different magazines like Transworld Skateboarding and SLAP. He even got the role of Senior Photographer at one of these roles. His photography career began with a Konica Pop point-and-shoot 35mm in the 80s – taking photos of his friends at the skatepark.
He has compiled the entire experience of skateboarding in the 1990s into one nostalgic book called ‘93 til. (I own this book and this was how I was introduced to this photographer). A lot of the philosophy of skateboarding is the desire to capture and document the life – and this is true for photography as well. Pete Thompson was clearly motivated by this desire. His photos are full of friends and good times – just hanging out and skateboarding for the fun of it. He worked with pro skateboarders like Tom Penny, Nyjah Huston, and Tony Hawk – and many others. He travelled the USA and Europe with these pro skateboarders documenting their journey along the way. In an interview with him, he speaks about how they would use the main bulk of the film roll for taking skate photos, and then there would often be a few shots left at the end – he says after a while he felt guilty for wasting these, and begun to take random shots of his friends with the last few on the roll – and these turned out to be some of his favorite photos – I like this.
Photo Analysis.
This is a film photograph of a skateboarding doing an ollie at a skatepark. The genre of this style of photography is portrait/action/identity. The mise-en-scene presents a lot of empty sky – taken up only by a skateboarder doing a large air. The floor takes up probably half the image and has curved concrete which creates an interesting shape to look at. This all creates a simple composition, with the image split into the thirds.
The colour is desaturated, although the sky is vibrant. The musty, dry looking air makes it feel like midsummer, and you can tell its hot, and dry. For example, if you look at the trees they aren’t a bright green but more of a hazy washed out green. The use of light has an old school feel – being a bit washed out. It is clearly taken in the height of summer’s heat – the photo almost has a heat effect. The whole image is very bright and slightly overexposed which creates a vintage, washed out feel.
The focus distance is infinite – the whole image is in focus and there seems to be an extremely wide depth of field. I believe that the photographer has used the rule of thirds – the image is split into three sections vertically – the floor, the sky and the skater – pretty much exactly follow the rule of thirds. I believe that the ISO is 400 – due to the amount of grain, and I believe that the shutter speed is quite high – a minimum of 1/250 because that is how high it needs to be for an action shot to not be blurry. The shot probably has an aperture of probably f/5.6 because of the wide depth of field, and the high amount of light that the other two settings let in.
As Pete Thompson says “Driven by my curiosity of photography. I always just wanted to be shooting something;” I think this is great way to describe a lot of the culture of photography and especially skateboarding. His work has a lot of black and white (not this image) – this is representative of the era he spent most of his career skateboarding – I think he has chosen to make his whole “‘93 til” book black and white because it helps non-skateboarders to understand the cultural significance of the image – a lot of these moments were future defining for the sport and even sport photography in general, without the black and white, it does not convey as well that these are vintage images of a different time – and people may not realise the impact they had. I think this says a lot about the use of colour and tone in photography in general – you have to consider what you want your image to convey and how you’re going to do that. I really admire this work, not only because I am a skateboarder, but also because I can see the thought – and often the lack of thought – he put in while taking the photo and editing it.
PHOTOSHOOT PLAN
My plan is to go down to the skatepark and just talk to the skaters and take natural photos to truly convey identity. I will use a 50mm Canon lens. I love taking photos that tell a story and show life. I think to do this I should also take photos of small details of the people and also things like the scenery and architecture of the skatepark. I think I will go at night and use my flash and a high shutter speed to create a freeze frame effect. I think my photos will end up being more similar to Pete Thompsons’ than Danny Evans’.