Heath Kirchart, Backside Tailslide, Oceanside, High School, Oceanside, CA 2000

Art Director: Ted Newsome

 

“Heath would always bounce ideas off me and finishing the conversation by asking if the idea might be cover worthy. Well, he actually only did that on a couple of occasions, this American flag concept being the first time. Originally we tried shooting a backside Smith grind in Los Angeles on a pretty windy night. Heath had bought the flag himself and we needed four or five people to hold it tight as a background. Well, flags and sails are similar as both are hard to hold when the wind picks up. Frustration with the wind got the better of all of us and plan B was to shoot at another spot, Heath liked the Oceanside High School rail and we got the crew together another night and met across the street from the high school around midnight. Heath went across the street to cut the lock with his Saws All but it was so noisy that he kind of freaked out and instead decided to just ram his car into the gate to break the chain and padlock. We watched safely from across the street. We laid low for a little while to see if the cops might show up and when it felt safe we all rolled into the spot, lit it up and raised the flag. This was one of the first skate photos I shot with my Hasselblad, I only had one lens, an 80mm so getting the angle right was kind of tough. Heath pictured it a certain way and I did my best to make that happen. For backup, I shot some from a different angle with my trusty Canon EOS 35mm camera but we ended up using the medium format version.”