Funsport Skateboard Magazine
Skater: Kos
Trick: Ollie to fakie
Photographer: Nils Svensson
Year: 1998
Spot: Bryggeriet Skatepark

This photo was taken a long time ago. Bryggeriet Skatepark had just opened up in 1998 and we used to spend a lot of time after hours skating and shooting photos. I had only been taking photos for a year or so and didn’t really know what I was doing, especially when shooting with flashes. For this particular shot I had borrowed some flashes with optical slaves from my friend and I was experimenting with some colored filters to see what that would look like. My camera at the time was an old manual Minolta X700 that I used with a selection of old blurry lenses and for this particular shot it must have been shot with the 28 on some crappy Konica slide film. I just bought the cheapest film I could find and since all the good photographers shot on slide film so did I. Probably not the best when you are learning but I didn’t know any better.

The photo turned out pretty cool I thought so I sent it in to the swedish skateboard magazine Funsport Skateboard together with a few other shots from the park. I had had one previous photo published before and I was just so stoked that I had managed to get it right once so it was a huge driving force and inspiration to get more stuff in the magazine. This shot of Kos was just pure luck but slowly things started to come together and after a while it was more me that was in control than the camera.

I didn’t have a clue that this lucky shot would end up on the cover of the raddest skateboard magazine in sweden and it was probably one of the coolest experiences in my photo career when the editor at the time, Magnus Gyllenberg came in to our local pub Tokaj one late evening and threw the magazine fresh from the printers on the table in front of me. STOKED!