Page 52 - BackSIDE rollbrett-heft 25th Anniversary

You started shoo�ng skateshots in for other people too. In 2000 I
2000. Only 2 years later you turned
this hobby into your profession. You
must be a quick learner. What was
the turning point to do it?
I do learn fast specially if the subject
means something to me, and
photography did. Injuries made the
whole process faster too. In a way I
felt I had wasted a lot of good years
to have finished a career at
something. I loved skateboarding but
it was not going to bring food to my
table. I quit architecture studies years
back just to be able to skate, and I
kind of regre�ed it. So, I just dived
into photography.
Are you considering taking up
architecture again or any other
subjects?
No. It’s been so long that it’d be
star�ng from scratch again. I’d rather
study something new.
What gear are you shoo�ng with?
Nikon 850, Contax 645, Nikon F5.
Is there any post-produc�on you do?
If so how far do you go?
I do all the post-produc�on of my
images and some�mes I’ve done it
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learned simultaneously Photoshop
for color and Darkroom for black and
white. I always try to have the
darkroom mindset s�ll ac�ve. I
developed my own films and prints
for 8 years straight, so whenever I
use Photoshop I try to s�ck to the
same rules.
Since 2008 you have worked as
photographer for Adidas
Skateboarding. What does a
photographer do for such a big
corpora�on?
In fact I worked for Juice Design (San
Francisco). Juice Design is an agency
that used to do all the big ad
campaigns for Adidas, and I shot for
them from 2008-2013. This included
most of the ad campaigns of the
brand.
In 2014 they started the Away Days
video project and then there were
other photographers as well, like
Zander Taketamoto and Sam Muller.
Back to the ques�on: I would shoot
the skate ads with a lot of incidentals
to spice it up, shoot the shoes on-
model and off-model & shoot
lifestyle portraits for catalogues.
Some�mes events too.
Mark Gonzales
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