The Berrics currently run a series of videos called Shoot All Skaters where they interview the people behind the cameras whether it's photographers or videographers, They talk about how they got into the business what inspires them and what their favourite shoots were/are. In Yoon Sul's interview he talks about an accident that happened to him when he was young where he nearly lost his sight. He talks about this being a massive changing point in his life, looking at things from a different perspective and suddenly getting this new found motivation.
"Everyone wanted to be a superstar, I just wanted to be a photographer".
The photographs for Yoonivision are always black and white with a bit of grain, so the ISO is probably high around 1600. From the looks of the photos a flash set up is being used meaning a shutter speed of 1/200sec or slower to sync in with the flash lighting. This would also explain why there is a blur in photographs where skateboarders are moving at speed.
When I went to recreate the shoot I had to improvise with the scenery, lighting, skateboarders and viewpoints. I don't have my own personal skatepark so I had to do the shoot outside. It was a pretty cloudy day so the lighting wasn't good, the skateboarders are good friends of mine so I knew that their capabilities were more than good enough for the photographs I required and the viewpoints just come naturally, don't they?
Obviously skateboarding isn't the safest of all things but it's the adrenline that fuels it right?
For the health and safety of the shoot I tried to make to it as safe as you can make skateboarding. I made sure the ground that my friends were skateboarding on was stable (no loose paving flags), I made sure the ground was free from glass, grit, and most importantly midget gems (skateboarders' arch nemesis). I positioned myself so that I wasn't in the way to avoid injury to myself and my friends. Another important saftey factor was that I told my friends to skateboard within their ability and their comfort zone just to decrease the chances of accidents happening, however accidents do happen as you will see in the photographs but just to clarify no one was injured juring the shoot (maby a scuffed elbow or a grazed hand but nothing serious).
This was the end result:
I tried to get my photographs as close to looking like Yoon Sul's as possible. I used a flashgun to get the same effects, like in the last photograph I bounced it off the window to make it look like a spot light. I'm quite happy with how the shoot turned out. If I was going to do it again I would try to get access to a skatepark, where i'd be able to rig up studio lighting. I would try to pick a day where the weather conditions are good; sunny with little wind. I know you can't tell from the photographs but as soon as i took the last shot the heavens opened and it started to rain heavily.
All in all I very much enjoyed shooting these photographs and would love to do it again.
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