Part time Manchester resident and full time travel enthusiast Joel Peck is up next in our Photographers Stories series, coming through with five of his favourite shots from across 2012 and the tale behind each.
Read on – more Photographers Stories coming your way soon…
I’m sure that every person who knows Tony will agree that he’s one of the most friendly, smiley and stylish skateboarders out there. With this comes modesty, a modesty that can sometimes merge, just slightly, into the negative depths of “I’m too old” or “I’m past it”. Judge for yourselves. Tony might be past thirty but that’s not stopping him from turning pro or effortlessly finding a new trick to battle up one of the countries most skated ledges. Keep your eyes peeled for lots of fresh Tony footage in two Manchester videos that are brewing; Joe Gavin’s ‘Snake Eyes Die’and Mark Kendrick’s ‘SHADS’.
Something that sticks in your mind the most about a skate trip or tour is the actual mode of transport and the journeys themselves. On this particular tour with The Harmony, Adam Mondon had made sure to hook us up with the absolute finest (free) Monster energy ‘van’, and good on him. We spent a week or so in various Twister positions in the back of the van envious of whoever was riding shotgun, although maybe not because then you had to deal with Mondon’s dancing and singing to the insane Bangra CD that had been found inside the stereo. We had our ups and downs with the van but it came through in this instance; Mondon floored it towards this road gap with no mercy for Jak who was hanging onto the side to carry out this textbook 360 flip.
Not much needs to be said here. I met Joe one morning to check out a spot relatively near his house before heading into town. The so-called spot was this waist high electricity box with a crusty run up. I’m always game to try and find different stuff but this wasn’t doing it for me! My feelings we irrelevant though because Joe wasted no time in hoisting himself up there. With no prior warm up, no video camera and in no more than ten minutes, Joe had rolled away from this. Easy! (Hyped on the postman BGP’s).
This ledge is situated deep within Manchester’s suave district and the run up happens to be the entrance to a Jamie Oliver restaurant. This was shot on one of the opening nights of the restaurant and the scene was brilliant; flocks of overdressed couples were arriving to be seen by other overdressed couples and eat overpriced, undersized meals. To their horror a big group of noisy skateboarders had unknowingly sabotaged their grand entrances. Amongst all the taxis, buses, pedestrians and resulting quarrels, I was trying to light the ledge up. Thanks to Kendrick for balancing on the wall up above Nick to be a human lightstand and bounce some light on him. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like heights and he wanted to film this. No problem for Nick though, he had this basically every go; a perfectly styled and extended switch crook coming back out to fakie.
What needs to be said here? Frank’s been one of my skateboard heroes since I can remember and I’m most definitely not alone in this. ‘Headcleaner’, ‘First Broadcast’ & ‘In Motion’ were all such influential and inspiring videos and Frank had stand out parts in all three. Long story short I was more than excited to have the chance to skate with him, I was just disappointed there was little to no photo potential at this random wasteland he’d brought us to.
“Oh wait, Frank’s found a tree and he happens to have a saw to get rid of protruding branches.”
I couldn’t have asked for more.
