“This spot is in a highway ghost town about three minutes from my house. I only ever go there to check the post office box or to waste my money on expensive petrol. The bag on the ground at the start of ledge has about a hundred tea candles in it. I had to use about fifteen of them before I was sliding at all. The wall is really rough and it’s a lot closer than it looks. The challenge was more to not cut my hand on the jagged bits of concrete poking out than to do the noseslide. The ledge is full of cracks and holes and isn’t really the easiest thing to skate. All those blurry yellowy/orange areas along the ground are leaves. Lots of little piles of dried out winter leaves; perfect for landing in and rolling through. The shot is taken not more than five meters from the edge of a road that happens to be the Pacific Highway – the segment of Highway 1 that joins Brisbane to Sydney and is thus a pretty intimidating audience of bikers, truck drivers and travellers to perform in front of.
But what I dig about this photo is that none of that is apparent.
The ledge appears smooth and seems to slide, the wall looks harmless, the leaves are more shimmering puddles of gold than they are crunchy yellow landing hazards and the composition isn’t concerned with the hundreds of people that would’ve driven past while we were skating there. I don’t usually like photos or videos of myself skating. It’s so easy to criticize yourself. But this photo has a lot more going on that just the trick…I love this photo.”
These photos were shot by Isaac’s brother, Gabe Roxburgh, with the new Lensbaby Spark. Lensbaby is running a photo story contest called Show and Tell over on their Facebook page. Check it out here to see more photo stories, and share your own for a chance to win.
