The Kuraby skate championship was the kind of event you could only find in Brisbane’s outer suburbs: a flat, sun-blasted skate park, a generator running a PA off a trailer, and a crew of local kids who had organised something real out of nothing much.
What I had not anticipated was the open mic. Between competitive runs, MCs took the stage — if you could call a trestle table and a speaker stack a stage — and worked the crowd with a confidence that had nothing to do with the size of the audience. The KBR cap, the microphone, the arm extended to the crowd: this was not rehearsed. It was just someone who knew what they were doing.
On the composite photograph: The frontflip sequence is a technique I use when a trick happens so fast that a single frame cannot contain it. I shoot in burst mode, then layer the frames in post-production, preserving each phase of the movement in the same image. The result is more honest than a single frame in some ways — it shows what actually happened, not just the peak of it. And it lets you see the mechanics of what these kids are doing on their scooters, which is extraordinary.
On youth events: I think there is a tendency to underestimate what young people organise for themselves when adults are not involved. This was a genuine competition, with genuine skill on display, run by people who cared about it. The photography reflects that. These are not children playing at something. They are practitioners taking their craft seriously.
On audio and video: The real record of the open mic sessions lives in the video I shot that day. The photographs are stills from a world that was in constant motion. If you have not seen the footage, the images only tell half the story — but they tell the half worth having.