The photos I took at the skatepark are a genre called documentary photography – this is the perfect opportunity to create a magazine so the photos are all linked together and tell even more of a story.

Skateboard photography normally consists of hot summer days, shirtless, sweaty people and sweltering sun. I wanted to convey a time in skating unique to the UK – cold, winter night skating – only for the hardcore. Everyone is wrapped up, gloves, hats, big coats. Skating on winter nights is hard – everything hurts more, your legs don’t work as well, the cold bites your fingertips – and this is conveyed pretty well in the photos through outfits, positions, the way people are huddled up.

I want to convey this through body language, angles, and people emotions.

Evaluation:

I think the zine conveys a sense of cold, shivery happiness like I wanted it to. I had to make some tough creative decisions in order to get some of these spreads the way they are, for example, when an image that I like becomes more of a background it is hard to accept – but it is worth it when I can put framed images over these photos because they end up look much more thought through. Also, when a landscape image has lots of negative space on one side I find it works really well to use the space to put frames or text in it. Throughout making this magazine I realised that text almost always looks more professional when it is much smaller than you would initially think. Most of the text that is in the final edition is over half the size of how I originally thought it looked good. Overall I’m really happy with how the zine came out, the high amount of contrast in the photos, and the grainy look I intentionally shot it with at a high ISO in order to have a more lo-fi effect.

Big Prints

I also want to have 5 of these photos printed in large, matte A3 size – I think this will look brilliant with the heavy grain. I’m going to choose 3 darker portraits, and 2 much more heavily exposed photos of small details like clothing or objects. That way I can have them in such an order that its almost like 1 line of a checkerboard.