Author: Crossfire

Welcome to the whacky world of Dan Cates. This man has given his entire life to skateboarding. He lives it, sleeps it, works it and plays it every day and brings his own game to how it’s done.

His dedication to Death Skateboards over the many years has been paramount in the success of the day to day running of the UK’s biggest skater owned skateboard company. Since we started this zine 7 years ago, Cates has been one of those unique individuals that we have waited for the right time to interview, so we gave the task to someone who had to live with him to ask the questions. That chosen fall guy was Kyle Green and a bottle of Cate’s favourite vino, Blue Nun.

Alright Cates let’s skip over all the bullshit and get straight into it does that work for you?

Sure I don’t care…

First things first, can you explain to me why every morning I am awoken from my beautiful slumber by you leaving your room to go to work shouting Dibble’s name to yourself at the top of your lungs, are you obsessed with him?

Well all i can say is…the school of thought behind it is basically that any situation with Dibble, no matter how mundane it is or normal it is, is just increased ten fold. And therefore the aim of my entire life is to uggghhhh. God. OK, basically shit day plus Dibs equals good day.

So would you say that Dibble enhances every situation for you?

Well he doesn’t enhance a situation where maybe your trying to do something really serious or requires a bit more brain power than the sort of shit he might be doing. But yeah a normal day in life or a skate trip or those sort of things, if Dibs is there it is good. Your just laughing all day as his expense.

But how did you become so obsessed? Because I literally cannot get a moment of peace without hearing you talking about him, how did you get to this point?

Well you gotta imagine a person where every single thing about them is fucked. He’s got a hunch back, he’s got an elbow on his dick, he’s got mum hair, he looks like Frankenstein, he’s got squid fingers, feet that look like claws, a potbelly, he’s gay. Every single thing you can imagine is wrong with him, it’s just incredible! He’s a walking phenomenon!

OK, if somebody had a gun and forced you to choose between your mother and Dibble who would you choose, who could you live without?

(sighs) That’s a tough one because if Dibble was dead then my main source of entertainment and when i say main I mean about 80% of my life, would be gone, so I would really have to think long and hard about that.

So basically your saying if Dibble died that your life would be over?

Well my life wouldn’t be over but it definitely wouldn’t be anywhere near as good.

I think that’s enough about Dan Dear.

Do you not wanna talk about the time he admitted that he raped a man at a VW car show?

Yeah sure, do you wanna tell us about that?

Ummm well I pretty much just did.

Well we would like to have some detail, how did this come about?

It’s a tough one for Dibs, he’s not really straight down the line gay , and he wouldn’t actually admit it, but…he’s so deeply sexually depraved. We know for a fact he fantasizes about having sex with some of his male friends. We know for a fact he fancies Nicolson, and he often mentions that Horsey is. If you like a younger man he’s a prime candidate. He’s fancied me for many years now which is unnerving, but I can cope with it. So he’s not like a conventional gay because he does like women, not that he can ever get any. Yeah, so one day it took about 2 hours of interrogation. but we managed to make him admit that whilst at Bug Jam he had in fact forced himself upon a man.

Was this the best day of your life when you got this piece of news?

It was a prime Dibble moment for sure. I was satisfied that I had accomplished something that day. Richie Jackson is staying at the house at the moment and he told me that Dean Palmer said that when he was staying at the house there was a bunch of guys all sleeping in the lounge and Dibble was one of them. He woke to Dibble talking in his sleep and he was saying “no Mum i’m not gay i’m not gay…” and he just couldn’t believe it!

Alright I cant take any more Dibble talk, time to move on…

Oh man…

One thing I’ve always noticed about you is that you seem to enjoy pain and torture?! I would even go as far as saying your a bit masochistic. For example, we traveled all the way to Burnley for an all night skate jam last year, and after hours and hours of skating instead of driving back home to London you insisted that we sleep at the skate park for about two hours before they kicked us and would have to camp out in a Weatherspoons half the day waiting for Zorlac to get up. What is it you enjoy so much about torturing your friends?

Well you know, firstly the all night you speak of was advertised as a Death all nighter jam, so the term all night means “all night” you know? Until the morning. So our reputation was at stake there and if it wasn’t for me we wouldn’t have actually been there all night and people might have said we were pussies. So you know, I made sure with everyone’s best interests at heart that we stayed there and our reputation stayed intact! Hahaha no pain no gain! Besides it was fun.

You have always had really strong opinions about certain aspects of skateboarding, how do you feel about skateboarding as a whole right now?

It’s really good that there seems to be a place for everybody right now everyone from the young kids, street guys, vert guys, bowl trolls, slalom riders, longboarders, old dudes. It seems every wake of life there’s a place for them now and it’s almost like everyone is accepted to a certain extent. Skateboarding is bigger now you see it on TV. I think it’s good. I like the fact that you’re watching the telly and all of a sudden on the Frosties advert Tony the Tiger is skateboarding. It’s pretty crazy and what really sums it up for me is a song in the charts by Avril Lavigne called “Skater Boy” about a guy who likes this girl and he skates but she doesn’t like him. Then she sees him on TV and wants a piece of him. It’s just bizarre. absolutely unbelievable. Who would have thought that 15 years ago there would be a song in the charts called Skater Boy? It’s just incredible.

At the same time it probably was a little bit better when it was more hardcore and we were just against society, nobody liked us or cared about us. Technically speaking that was a little bit better but now all these freaks want a piece of us and there’s loads of money floating about loads of competitions and we are on TV, everybody sees us. I like it. I probably don’t like some of the attitudes out there, some of the narrow mindedness of the kids saying you can only film street skating you can’t film in a skate park etc, and just saying people are ‘no good’, it just doesn’t mean anything to me.

Would you say you have the same respect for people like Sheckler or Bam Margera as opposed to say a Puleo or a Pappalardo, somebody who is just keeping it real, like not selling out just straight skateboarding and that’s it?

That’s a really interesting question because if somebody said to me I’ll give you the option to swap your life for Bam’s life tomorrow then i would just take it. I just don’t understand what is there not to like. The guy is just amazing. He has made an absolute fortune by just playing silly buggers with his best friends in his home town. He skates amazing, he’s still pro, he’s still rad, like watch the Element video, he’s still amazing. Sheckler, not so much for me, i’ve only seen one episode of his show so i don’t really know what all the fuss is about but with him i’m not quite as interested. Maybe it’s because he’s a bit younger, i’m not sure. All the shit people talk on Tony Hawk is just completely backwards if you ask me. If you were to go back in time to the 80s to see what he did and see the amount of money he has brought to skateboarding, it’s incredible. He has opened up so many opportunity’s for people on the pro circuit through his game and general popularity and the amount of interest he has brought to skateboarding is massive. I fail to see how anybody could say anything bad about him, all he has done is invent loads of tricks and just skate and be really rad, I just don’t get it. It’s like if somebody was a massive fan of golf and they had some weird problem with Tiger Woods. It’s just absolutely retarded.

So if MTV or somebody like that came knocking on your door asking for a show like Rob and Big but instead a Cates and Dibble show would you just be on your knees signing the contract or how far would they have to go to get you to do that?

Well they wouldn’t have to go very far at all because that is my dream, so if there is anybody from MTV reading this interview then get in touch please because me and Dibs are ready to go baby!!! (manic laughing)

What kinda things do you think the two of you could offer not just the UK but maybe the world as a whole in a purely entertainment level. What could you bring us that would have us on the edge of our collective seats?

I could assure you that the world ain’t never seen no Cates and Dibs shit before. i mean Cates and Dibs would bring a whole new level of entertainment to the table, it’s difficult to put into words, but it would be a real experience. Nicolson already made a pilot for a show we made called “Pimp my Bedsit” so hopefully that will be seeing the light of day soon. possibly on the new Motel 6 video.

Looking back at The Big Push (and from the stories i’ve heard it sounds like what would potentially be the most miserable week of my life), what goes into that sort of trip? How far are you having to push yourself and the rest of the team to make a video worth watching for everybody?

Well i just want to let everybody know that the whole concept for the Big Push that was mine and Sam Ashley’s idea in the first place and we somehow managed to plant the seed in Percy’s brain and get the ball rolling – for 4 years. So the beginning of the trip is me and Zorlac plotting the route figuring out where the hotels are gonna be, where the insane terrain is, where the good street, good bowls a little bit of everything really. We just go through it with a fine tooth comb and have everything planned, then we pick the heads who are gonna perform. get them into the van with about 200 cans of Relentless, somebody to drive that fucker, and a couple of filmers if we got a bigger group. In the early days we went with a smaller group but now we tend to just go with about 13 heads which is in my view a nightmare but still Zorlac’s wishes. Then we hit the road, he pretty much leaves me in charge so i can keep everybody under control to a certain extent because I’m buying everybody’s breakfast and dinners. So if they play up there not gonna get fed.

So yeah, i’m there as a skater as well but i’m also there so in Zorlac’s absence, everybody skates and we do our best every single day which sometimes means skating all through the night. Average check in time to the hotel is about 4 am every night. If it’s raining the skating still has to go on either in the rain or somewhere under cover because we have to rack up that footage. The company name is at stake. I’m there till the early hours of the morning, possibly setting up the lights or doing some other bullshit that nobody appreciates just to keep the skating going.

It seems like you have transitioned over into more of the production side of skateboarding these days with full camera kit and your doing more filming now, when you go on these trips do you still enjoy it on the same level as you used to or has it become more of a job and your there just doing what has to be done?

Well on the Big Push is a bit more job like and it’s a bit more hectic because we are competing against the other teams, it can be a little bit of a hectic role because some people wanna just go back to the hotel or just go to the pub and I have to tell them they can’t because we are there to skate. If there’s hours of daylight and its dry we gotta be skating so it does become my job in some instances to force people to skate. but on a normal trip its not really like that. I do love just getting out there for a few days, just getting away from home for a few days is a huge motivation for me to do stuff really, normal trips aren’t as crazy as the Big Push that’s for sure.

I’m staring at your mug collection right now and its quite clear that you love to travel. When you are planning these trips do you plan them 100% around skateboarding or do you more so plan them to see what that particular country and culture has to offer?

Well, I’ve been to 38 different countries so far and there is only one trip i went on that wasn’t for skateboarding. So i would say pretty much its always about skateboarding primarily. In the early days we would go to Germany to the Munster contest or maybe to America. I was young i didn’t give a shit about anything what so ever that had to do with culture, I was just concerned about skateboarding, meeting skateboarders and going to skate spots. But as i have got older, when i go to a place and if there’s time, I like to check out the local culture, see more things and get the hang of it. Wherever i go i like to buy a mug from each different country to help me remember the time i had there. I have been really lucky over the years. For instance riding for Eastpak they took us to Kuwait to the United Arab Emirates to Lebanon, Poland, Portugal and various other places that I probably never would have got to see. So that really opened up my eyes to what was out there and later on I planned some more crazy trips to Israel which was probably the trip of a lifetime.

How was your recent visit to Central America?

Visited Cuba, Nicaragua Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru. The trip was totally amazing and surprisingly easy going when you take into consideration that all the countries that i went to are in central/south America and a lot of people you speak to regard them as super sketchy places. My favorite place was Quito in Ecuador. The skatepark there is something i have always wanted to skate since the first time i saw it in Thrasher. It’s like aliens built it! Well worth the trip as there is nothing else like it anywhere in the world. Cuba was also a unique place with some very unique spots. The trips are always a bonus if you have Dibs with you but sadly he’s kind of a loser and he can’t always come.

Any stupid animal stories?

Not really, but i did go on an Amazon cruise which was an eye opening experience to say the least. I have pictures of monkeys, tarantulas, iguana, caiman, boa constrictors etc, the list goes on. It was some serious David Attenborough shit!

Could you live the life in the future cruising the hills and sitting in hot springs?

I love the sun and the sights and of course the natural hot springs, who doesn’t? But i don’t think i would live there, especially as there are so many other places to see and the UK is such a perfect geographical position for traveling to other countries. You can still get cheap flights to most countries in Europe, Northern Africa, Iceland and countless other places. With 193 countries in the world how do you decide which one is your favourite?

How much planning goes into these trips? Do you like to plan every single aspect of them or do you like to just buy a ticket get yourself over there and see what happens?

The only thing you really have to do is get a ticket and go there. Just so long as you have some money you can just figure it out once your there. But if i find out a little about some place and I know there is something to skate there and i know i have enough money to get there and back, that’s all I need really. If you can meet up with people and stay with them that’s better but if i have money for a hotel no big deal really. If you have somebody with you and you can film and shoot photos that’s good as well.

Cyprus was your last destination with the Death team, who was on it?

Mark Nicolson-paranoid hypercondriac nervous wreck, photograph mvp. Adam Moss -“I just wanna chill man”, footage mvp. Moggins-Sex obsessed rat like pervert, looks and acts like a caveman, but smells worse. Hurt himself as usual. Boots-Boots is just Boots, Always himself, always reliable, handles business when the time is right. Chris Johnson-The new big man on campus. Click here for a blog feature from the trip.

How were the skate spots?

Limassol basically has enough epic spots to keep any regular skate crew occupied for a fortnight, if you know where to look. The attitude to skateboarding there is a pretty decent one to. Cyprus is a great destination for a skate mission, i’m glad that we were one of the first teams to go there on a trip like this.

Will it be a future feature in Sidewalk?

Yes it will, so keep your eyes firmly fixed on the UK’s finest skateboard magazine for evidence of epic spots in the furthest corners of the Mediterranean.

You always have new board graphics coming out and you always have new ideas for what you want and you have strong opinions on what you wanna see on the other boards. What have been some of the graphics you’ve seen over the years that have really stuck out in your mind?

Growing up skateboarding in the 80’s it was a really special time for board graphics, it was the start of skaters doing there own graphics that said something about them selves. I hate to sound tram-line but I have to name Neil Blender. He was one of the first to do his own graphics, he started it off, Graphics like “the coffee break” which i even have a tattoo of. Back in those days you would go into the skate shop and look at the wall of boards and in those days it was only 50 or 60 pro’s, so it was a special thing to have a board and all the graphics were hand drawn and silk screened. It was a really special time, a lot of luminous graphics. I love boards that are bright because that whole era was just the glory days for me and just really stuck in my mind. The thing about the pro’s doing their own graphic was it made you want to buy the board because it meant something. You could feel something about the pro. It even had there own shape on it. We don’t really have custom shapes anymore so all we have now is a graphic so i think it’s a pro’s job to not only skate good but to put out some kind of message or something that influences kids. Just the whole package something they can aspire to or relate to.

What are your views on computer graphics?

I’m really not a fan of all the computer graphics or the stock graphics most board graphics you can see. It just took somebody ten minutes on the computer, where as in the old days you would have Powell graphics done by a guy called Vernon Courtland Johnson. who was an incredible artist, He did the McGill graphic, the Tony Hawk bird skull, the Lance Mountain cave painting board. I think probably my all time favorite company was called “Brand X “from the mid 80’s to early 90’s and the graphics were done by a guy called Bernie Tostenson. Some of the early H-Street graphics.

If you wanna talk about a modern company I think the early World Industries graphics really offended a lot of people and they really made a statement that inspired kids. They almost made you proud to be a skater just because you had something different going on. and i think one of the few companies that hold true to that now is consolidated. they still have all there graphics hand drawn some of them are offensive some inspiring, all interesting. As far as British companies go I’ll say Death obviously. Just because it’s so open minded in it’s graphic ideas, so it’s a real privilege to ride for them and work with Nick and do some stuff that actually means something. He always try’s to get a graphic for whatever pro it is that really says something about him, which i think is what you should be aiming for.

If you had to pick 3 of your boards that you’ve had done as your favorites which would you pick?

If it was just one it’s probably my new one that’s based on the Thrasher t-shirt that says “why can’t my boyfriend skate”, and there was another one which actually didn’t sell that well. It was based on a Skull Skates, Ken Mcguire graphic and my face on a photo copier and i thought that worked pretty well. Not because it was my face, you could hardly even make out it was me just the fact it was really cool and it was in a box and I like stuff to be in a box all neat. and then probably the other one was called “the target” board and it was a big yellow and black target on a prismatic board and it just really reflected the light in a cool way.

What has been your favorite Death board ever?

That’s a tough one because at the moment I think we have nearly 40 out. To be honest i’m really pleased with my ones and I really like the Melcher hounds tooth skull deck. It’s based on him and it’s got a hat on with hounds tooth in the back ground that looked really good set up. Dainton’s new board also, it’s like a Mexican skull and it looks pretty rad. The Zarosh cookie monster is pretty cool too and i really liked his first board with the Sacred Heart on it. I really like dipped boards.

Ally-oop rock and roll slide in Barcelona. Sequence by Styley.

What skateboarders are doing it for you these days, who makes you wanna go out and skate?

This is always so difficult because I always forget people when i get asked questions like this. I would probably say some pretty obvious names to be honest. I like Mariano, Daewon Song, if you wanna talk about the ultimate classic skateboarder I’ll say Lance Mountain, he pretty much appeals to most. In the U.K I’ll say Ross McGouran, Chris Oliver, Jody Smith, Neil Smith, those guys are good. Benson was very very impressive on the Big Push. Horsey has been skating really well recently, seems like he’s able to skate anything i don’t know how he’s managed that but he seems to manage everything from a 13 feet vert bowl to a massive street gap.

Did you cry tears of joy when you saw Guy Mariano’s part in the Lakai video? Because I’ve heard numerous people claim that they did…

Yeah, I think firstly the music was really moving and appropriate for him, so as always an excellent choice with him, and yeah he basically turns up out of nowhere having five years off and just blew the doors off skateboarding. It’s amazing that somebody of his age can just turn up and piss on everybody else’s act from a great height. Yeah it really was moving stuff. i’m sure it will go down in the history books.

When was the last time you shed some genuine tears?

The thought of…oh fuck…pass.

Apart from skating full time you seem to constantly be busy doing other bits of work. Whatever kind of stuff have you been getting into and do you feel like it takes away from your skateboarding or does it make the time you get on board more enjoyable?

The bottom line is if your gonna live in the UK, there’s only 5 or so guys that can make a living out of skateboarding. There just isn’t really much more room than that. So basically you got to have something else to support you. I’m lucky enough to work at Power Distribution which is the mother company of Death Skateboards and is actually run from my house, so i’m quite lucky really. The fact that I don’t have to commute to work and in British terms I have one of the best jobs in skateboarding. So I do that three days a week and i have time to skate. On top of that I teach kids to skate at a senior school in Wembley, I do various other events for this company that puts on skate events for kids. That gets me by basically. There is a saying “work hard play hard” so when i’m around I work as hard as I can and get my money together for the next trip.

Day Release ‘changing the face of rock and roll history’. Sequence by Rob Falcon.

You’ve recently expanded your life even more outside of skateboarding by forming a rock band with Matty, Adam, crazy Pete and Nicolson. What exactly is the story behind the band and how rewarding has it been for you to be in a band? Is it a good creative outlet or is it just an excuse to stand on stage and spit cider on people?

It’s been fun so far, I’ve always wanted to be in a band and I finally am. I finally made it – I’m a rock star Mom. So yeah we got Matty on lead guitar, Nicolson on rhythm guitar, Pete on bass, Adam on drums, sorry ‘pool skater Adam’ on drums, and myself on vocals – it’s been quite a good experience so far. We’ve really punished some ear drums. We like to keep it real and just play at skate parks and demos and contests and things like that, we’re gonna be recording some tracks soon so look out for those. I really like the fact that we get to punish people in the audience by forcing them to listen to the most foul sounds that we can make. I hope it really pisses people off, I just wanna make it quite clear that we hate everyone.

I’ll have to say my one Day Release experience was actually quite enjoyable and the band sounded much better than I thought it would but it did result in seeing one of my best friends Matty the most drunk I’ve ever seen a human being in my life.

Is that how most of your shows end up do you guys just have to get completely drunk to perform such hideous music?

Well I definitely have to have a couple of cans. It’s pretty difficult without. The type of material were dealing with is not for the faint of heart, so yeah its usually like that. Some people have pulled my trousers down on stage and you know some skulls have been stamped on, people have paid in pain. It’s all part of the process, people have to really suffer for this to carry on.

I think your known for being good with your money…

Are you saying i’m tight?

I’m saying your extremely tight!

(manic laughing)

So how does such a tight person come to spend a small fortune on a terrible, virtually unskateable bowl in his back garden?

Well firstly I’d like to say that the bullshit bowl was one of my finer achievements in life. I’d like to say that in the shallow end it’s a good 12 inches and it makes a good skate, you guys should check out the edit…plus Horsey likes it.

Well how do you feel that we don’t get to enjoy it in our back garden anymore and we have to sneak over to a different house in Harrow and hop over a fence and risk being arrested to skate such a god-awful spot is it exciting to you or do you find it a bit annoying?

It’s definitely exciting, but it’s not ideal conditions no. However the bullshit bowl lives on, it’s been present for 7 years now.

How do you feel about having to bail it out every three days due to the terrible weather along with dealing with the fence hoping the police, dealing with landlords, what drives you to skate such terrible things with no redeeming qualities?

You know what they say in Animal Chin, “the only place to find a hard core skater is at a hard core skate spot”. So i’m just keeping the dream alive.

How do you see the UK skate scene surviving the credit crunch?

This credit crunch thing is a total downer. The last 10 years have been some of the most healthy years skateboarding has ever had. There are a lot of people who have grown up in this modern age of sponsored skateboarding where almost everything is given to them on a plate for free. Those people are starting to get the shock of their lives as the smaller and less well organized companies start to go bust. The weaker brands and even some of the better ones are having to shut down. Many of the shops are struggling to stay open and big distributors are being forced to sell to T.K. Maxx just to try and stay afloat. It’s a struggle which ever step of the ladder you are on. Basically only the strongest most hell bent skaters and companies will hold on to their positions and everyone else will be left by the wayside, i’m sorry to say. So skaters who aren’t doing anything to make something of themselves and their companies will end up sidelined and shops without the right stock will close and companies with high overheads and product that people aren’t into will fold, as will the distributors. I just hope people are ready to go back to the way it was in the eighties.

How will Death be affected by the recession?

Only time will tell. We all trust Nick’s decisions and stand by them, he’s brought us this far and hopefully he can get us through all this doom and gloom.

Will you have to give up the Death Mansion and sell all the sports cars?

Yeah maybe we can sell the whole lot and just about afford a slap-up meal at McDonalds for the whole team. Haha!

I guess you still have the Delboy 3 wheeler if things get really tough?!

I’m afraid not, Zorlac already sold that for a staggering £200!

Despite a recession, what is making you happiest?

The thought of Dibs suffering, my hedgehog, my girlfriend cooking me Mexican food, the fact that I bought a slalom board at the weekend…

At the moment what is making you most unhappy?

Just being alive, ugghh, nothing in particular I guess.

Lastly, what would you describe as your perfect Sunday?

Oh shit! So i wake up and Ginger Steve and Dibble come round. We make Ginger Steve drive 5 hours to a really bad ditch he doesn’t want to go to anyway. Maybe some other people are there who are rad to skate with like Horsey or Matty or maybe Tony Hawk. Yeah, say Tony Hawk is with us and Lance Mountain, Neil Blender, Eric Koston, maybe Guy Mariano as well. Then we all skate the ditch have a rad time whilst Ginger Steve sulks on the other side of the ditch with his head in his hands then we make him drive us back. Then we tie up Dibs strip him naked by the side of the road and then torture him as that would be really funny. Then we get home and go to a party with loads of page three girls, yeah something along those lines. Oh then we go to Southend and get fish and chips and have a cream tea.

Oh man that sounds really terrible. Is there anybody out there you wanna thank?

Yes I’d like to say thanks to my hedgehog “Bramble”, I wanna say thanks to Dibble, thanks to my sponsors Nick Zorlac, Death skateboards, Power Distribution, Ricta wheels, Fury Trucks, Shiner, Brimley, Mob Grip, Victory Hardware, Vox footwear, i-Five Distribution, Motel 6, Dibble, Relentless, Eastpak, Leticia and Birdo at Consolidated, Ian Passmore for filming the bullshit bowl footage and Phraeza Hamilton for editing, my band, my girlfriend Alex for proving I’m not gay, i love farts, gangster rap, David Hasslehoff, Kyle Green, Crossfire Zac, all the magazines, Sidewalk, Document, Chris Johnson, the Death team and Jake Phelps.

Eric Antoine‘s photography has been on our radar for a while now. His unique life in the lens shooting skateboarding has also led him into the world of music and fashion and is certainly inspiring to view.

Hailing from France, Eric is currently the team photographer for Etnies, éS and Emerica Shoes and also shoots for magazines such as Soma, Sugar, Monster, Kingpin and Place. Welcome to Eric Antoine’s Triple Shot.

How long have you been a photographer?

I’ve been shooting photos seriously since 1994/95.

How did you get into skate photography?

I lived in Strasbourg when I was 20 and I did some studies I didn’t like and had some little job I liked even less. I decided to meet a friend in New York, skated there a lot and met people who showed me how to take my (already existing) photography to the next level. I bought my first Fm2 there and got started shooting the skaters I was hanging out with. It was in 1996. My first photo was published that year. It was a wallride from Harold Hunter.

Looking back to when you started out, what were the best and worst bits of advice anyone gave you in regards to photography?

I can’t remember any bad advice unless I just didn’t pay attention. Best one was when my friend Remi taught me how to print black and white.

What image inspired you so much to take up photography? What effect did it have on you?

I don’t have it to hand but I think it would be a skate photo from Thomas Campbell. His photography really pushed me in a direction I still keep today. At the time he was doing some great black and white 35mm with an fm2 and some cross processed pictures that had a lot of effects on me. I met him through Benjamin Deberdt when I lived in New York and without noticing it, he really inspired me.

Have you ever felt bad about taking a photo?

Not really, but yes. I do feel bad when I take a photo of a very poor person struggling, but somehow I keep taking them. Just to show them to those who don’t see and don’t want to see…and also when we really bother someone skating a spot, or if the spot is a nice and old monument, then I feel bad. Sometimes I even want to leave. We need to respect that as it’s only skating.

What are the best days shooting skateboarding?

I have had so many good days of shooting. It was for sure in the early days because I only carried a FM2, a fish eye, an 85 and a couple triX in my bag and skated around with my friends. Those are the best days. I do this sometimes with my friends Steve Forstner and Sylvain Tognelli, because that’s the way they like it! I had good times going in the South of France with Yves Marchon, together, or with Steve and Sperka in Slovenia.

And worst days?

Once, my back was stuck and I was on an Etnies tour in Italy, I HAD to shoot photos and I went there crawling trying to set up my flashes. It was terrible. I remember standing in the cold many times waiting for a skater to land his trick. Bad times.

Explain your choices for your fave shots…

I can’t really pick one shot. I like a lot of them. I don’t really see one standing out so I have picked 2 favourite shots for this feature instead of submitting an inspiration shot. They are not very recent but I like these 2. They were shot around 2003 I guess, but the first one (above) is a cross processed photo of Oli Buergin who I travelled with for 10 years now. I like the colours. It was a deserted town in the South of France where there are many people in the summer, but no one in the winter and you can feel it in the photo. It’s calm and still…like he is stuck in the 180 position. I print my colour photos myself, I have less and less time to do it but it’s a good thing for cross process. This is my answer to a future question: advantage for analog photography? Just look at those 2 photos…

Explain this one….

It is a photo of my friend Hans Claessens in 2003. We were shooting his interview and we went to the train station where he took his train for Brussels. This steep bank was there, the run up was impossible but he still did that bs noseblunt. Hans is my favorite person to shoot photos with and also favorite person to skate with. This is the kind of photo I like, it’s got a bit of action but so much more going on, what a shame it would be to shoot it with a fish eye. Here you can see so much happening, so much more feelings, am I wrong?

So tell us about the relationship between a photographer and filmer on a shoot?

I used to do everything with my friend Yves Marchon, I love the guy so everything went smooth but we still argued about who’s got the best angle or the advantage on the footage, photographer or filmer? So we’d argued for a little bit, then we’d get together in the evening like an old couple and apologized for being stupid about things like that. Haha, good times! Anything with Yves was great. Now I work with Jean Feil, I know him since he is 13 and he is now a good photographer, so he understands my angle. Everything is fine with him, we live in the same city and travel together.

Best photo story ever..

I think everyone knows this one by now, but here it is again. One day we were at the office at Soletech in Basel with a friend called Oli Buergin the team manager. A guy who pretended to be Tom Penny arrived in his shop, with no shoes on and super dirty, he was asking for shoes and board. Anyway, it worked out that this guy took care of Tom for a while because he really had trouble when he was by himself. Right after this, Tom came to my place and we skated some mini ramp and a bit of street. At this time he didn’t do any big gap or rails for a while and on that day he decided to kickflip the triple set in my hometown. I shot a sequence but he did it so fast, I wasn’t even ready and then it was a bit cropped. Finally it became an és ad. After this we went to the South of France and Barcelona together, he did a tailslide on a big ledge which was his first for a long time and I think I was really successful with this photo. We had a great time and it was always kind of strange, you know, because it was Tom and he was that legend we all had in our heads. It was in 2000 I think. I got married a bit after this and Tom came to my wedding in Strasbourg. Even if at the time it seemed just normal, as a skater and growing up in a town in France and looking up to his skating, you understand how I could feel about this.

Are there ways of getting better/free equipment as you continue to grow or do you have to fund everything yourself?

Well I never spent to much money on my equiptment, I never change and I buy it used most of the time…and I don’t get free cameras. I guess there are ways, by making a proper file with your photos and projects to Nikon and Canon or even film brands. I’ve heard you can get sponsored, I never did it.

Do you get by in life with this income alone?

Yes, I work a lot and for a lot of people. ‘I have many hats’ as we say in France.

This 3rd shot is remarkable….

This is a photo from my last series of pictures “through the backseat window”. It a series about nostalgia. It was born from my passion for old family photos from the beginning of the 20th century. This series combined many different alterations that used to happen on old black and white print. If blogs existed in the 1940s, that would be the journal of a young kid going places in his parents car on in a bus on sunday’s trip to panoramic view where millions of people shot a photo before him. That’s what I try to show. I’m still working on that series and it’s going to be an exhibition at the end of the year if I get it ready by then. I shot a few of them in France, then I went on a road trip by myself in Arizona and shot many photos everyday from 7am to 7pm. I also spend a lot of time for each of those in the lab and I’m enjoying this most of all.

What music artists can you not leave for a tour/shoot without?

I need good mix in the car when I’m on tour. That can change. On every tour we have a song we love with Jean and we always listen to it. We love Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen so there is always a lot of them. It’s never new stuff, I listen to a lot of old lost rock or folk, even some bluegrass and rock’n’roll. I like old things. I’m old.

If you were to buy a pocket snapper for capturing skating on a budget to get going, which camera would you suggest?

Yashica T4. Always. Then if you get a bit more money. Contax t2 or t3. If you want a cheap reflex: Olympus OM1…And finally, when you manage to sell your old toys or your sister’s cd collection at a flea market, buy a FM2 and enjoy the best.

What are the benefits of using film over digital then in your experience?

Film is unique. You can process and print it, touch it, it exists. It’s in a folder in your apartment, it’s almost alive. Colour are genuine and original, black and white has a charming grain, you can do so much with it and you always discover new things, new effects. There are definitely a lot of thing you can’t copy with photoshop and digi (as many people think).

Digital is fast, you can learn faster by seeing the result, you can bring only a digi cam in your bag and shoot the whole day, the result will be OK. New cameras are super sensitive and you can shoot 3200 and it looks clean, it’s great for sequences. BUT, everyting gets faster in this world now, is that a good thing? Don’t we forget what’s important and good. We lose the fun. Plus digital photos don’t exist, they are virtual, people don’t print them either so they just see them on screens. Digi looks cold and unpersonal, it looks sharp and shiny, like people like things now. But hey, do you like the Sharp plasma screen better than a cinema screen? Do you like the Sharp HD video better than 16mm or super 8? Ask yourself this. We’re losing what’s good in life, just to gain time. To do what??

So what kit do you use?

FM2, Hasselblad 500cm, Nikon D3, Mamyia c220, Contax t2 amongst other…

What main advice would you give to upcoming skate photographers?

Experiment, don’t try too hard to be someone. Just shoot your friends and most of all, don’t think fancy equipment will make you a good photographer.

You have a cracking new site, must be cool to see your work in such a neat space?

Thank you, yes, I did this so people can see what I do besides skateboarding. I didn’t put many action shots in there. I use it also for my advertising clients or people who want to hire me for a job and don’t know anything about photography. I had a blog and I got used to show my photos there, I saw that people were into it, with the site I touch more people…

Visit Eric Antoine at his site – www.ericantoinephoto.com