Kris Markovich, Kickflip, Carlsbad High School, Carlsbad, CA 1993

Art Director: Ted Newsome

“There was a lot of randomness to this photo of Kris Markovich kickflip a the infamous Carlsbad Gap. First off, I went there with Rob Dyrdek and his crew from Alien Workshop (even company owner Chris Carter was there on this day). I’m pretty sure Kris just showed up to watch but the session was heavy and just joined in. Jamie Thomas was there but I barely knew him, I think it was  just a few days after he’d moved down to SoCal. Anyway, I was shooting Rob switch-ollie the gap and Kris just started trying kick flips—at the time, switch was relatively new, so I got the impression Rob’s trick was going to be far more memorable. When Kris landed this kickflip I had just finished a roll of color slide film and because it was gloomy out I put in some Kodak TMax 400 B&W film and shot it In those days, TWS had a darkroom and all the photographers would check in their film and wait for the darkroom tech to process the rolls. Sometimes it would take longer than a week to get your film back so you could see the images. Well, I guess Ted Newsome put a rush on this particular roll and had a print made without me knowing about it. Kris came in and colored it with Sharpies and Ted showed it to me the next day. Damn, it looked fucking sick and it ended up as a cover for Kris (before seeing the colored print, I had thoughts of giving Rob his first cover with the switch ollie). To top it off, the negative for this is lost in space and all I have is the original print and HiRes scan. Oh, I also have the Hi8 footage on a tape in my closet.”