Interview by Conor Risch

In 2005 skateboarder Danny Way went to China to launch himself over the Great Wall, off of the largest skateboard ramp ever built. Mike Blabac traveled with Way, a close friend, to photograph the record-breaking spectacle. Recognized as one of the top skate photographers in the world, Blabac’s presence at the event was a metaphor for his success. To make a great skateboarding image a photographer has to be around innovative skateboarders doing things everyone wants to see. “The most important thing for me was just being there in the right place at the right time, just being lucky,” says Blabac.
   
Born in Ohio in 1973 and raised in Lansing, Michigan, Blabac became interested in skate photography studying pictures in seminal skate magazines like Thrasher and TransWorld Skateboarding. At 20 he moved west to San Francisco, then a skateboarding hotbed, and within two years he had placed his first photograph in TransWorld. Blabac went on to shoot for several skateboard companies before taking a job with one of the biggest brands in the sport, DC Shoes, where he is currently the director of skateboarding photography. His first book, Blabac Photo: The Art Of Skateboarding Photography, will be released this fall by powerHouse. It gathers together Blabac’s best published and never-before-published work from his 20 years as a photographer. PDN spoke with Blabac about his early days, the evolution of his personal style and the style of skate photography, and the unbeatable thrill of jumping fences in the middle of the night with a backpack full of photo gear.

PDN: Was your technical learning process mostly trial and error?

Mike Blabac: Yeah, it was. Shooting lots and lots of film. Grant Brittain, who was the photo editor at TransWorld at the time, helped me out a lot. He taught me about dragging the shutter and lighting things up with a flash and making sure that the ambient exposure matched with the flash. That was a big learning curve for me, because I didn’t even have Polaroid at the time, I couldn’t afford it, so it was just shooting a lot of film.

PDN: Do you think the action or the composition is more important to making a good skateboard photograph?

MB: I think it’s a little bit of both. To me, it’s the composition of it, because I’m a photographer, but to the kids it’s the action. I’ve always tried to shoot photos that when the kids look at it the way I looked at it when I was a kid, they get stoked on it. But I try and frame it and shoot it in a way that I’m stoked on it too as a photographer, and hopefully other photographers who don’t know anything about skating will be too.

PDN: Is composition most important when you’re selling a skate photograph?

MB: Yes it is. You have to know that if you’re selling someone a horizontal photo the [subject] can’t be in the gutter, you have to think of those things. Sometimes when I’m shooting something really crazy I’ll always leave room at the top if it could be a cover. So I am thinking compositionally how it will lend itself to an ad or a spread in a magazine or a cover.

PDN: How has your visual style changed?

MB: It’s not as loose as it once was. When I was a kid I was holding the camera out with a fisheye lens and whatever was in the photo was in there. But now I think about everything technically a lot more because I have the ability to do so with the equipment and the knowledge of doing it over the last 20 years. So I think it’s more polished. It’s kind of apparent in the book when I go through it and I look at some of the old stuff, like any photographer who looks at their old work, you’re like, “Why did I do that?” I think it’s just a natural progression where things are compositionally framed differently and a lot tighter than when I first started years ago.

PDN: Do you feel like the style of skate photography in general has changed during your time?

MB: A lot of the earlier photos that Spike Jonze and Tobin Yellin and Grant [Brittain] used to shoot were a lot looser, for the same exact reason as what I was explaining. I think technically people have gotten a lot better. Skateboard photography has advanced just like skateboarding. Before, if you had a camera that shoots 1/350th of a second and a fisheye lens you’re chillin'. Now kids are going out with crazy digital cameras and tons of lights and things are technically a lot better. I still like looking back and seeing a lot of the ambient lit, cool stuff that a lot of people did years ago.

PDN: Do you think it’s progressively harder to come up with original-looking skate photographs?

MB: Sometimes it is. It’s not like I go out and scout locations. You go wherever there’s something good to shoot, and sometimes there’s something interesting in the background and sometimes there’s absolutely nothing in the background. If you’re in the middle of New York City anything you shoot would look amazing, but if you’re in San Diego behind a white building—I challenge myself in those situations to do stuff with lighting or try and do different things so that no matter what you’re going to make a good skateboard photo.

PDN: Are there photographers outside of skateboarding that have influenced you?

MB: As a kid I was always interested in photography. I would buy American Photo and all types of different magazines; I read all the Ansel Adams books. I looked at a lot of fashion photographers like Richard Avedon and Patrick Demarchelier and Annie Leibovitz, a lot of their work has totally influenced what I do, there’s so many amazing photographers that I love looking at all their stuff. A lot of the portraits in the book are done with white backgrounds because I love looking at Avedon. I rarely look at inspiration within skating. I still buy a lot of photo book all the time. I bought a lot of books looking for inspiration for layouts [for my book].
   
I worked with a designer and laid out the book and when [powerHouse] first saw PDFs they were really taken aback because they expected youth culture. I wanted really badly to make a coffee table book but with skateboarding photographs.

PDN: Why do you think that you’re photographs have been so widely recognized?

MB: I could have a big head and say, "Because they’re good," but I think it’s because of the people they’re of. There wouldn’t be a whole chapter at the end if I wasn’t such good friends with Danny [Way] or hadn’t worked for DC [Shoes]. If he wasn’t such a crazy human being, jumping over the Great Wall of China or building the Mega Ramp—I was just very fortunate to be around people like him and everyone else in the book. It’s kind of hard to take a bad photo of someone going 40 miles an hour at something, jumping 40 feet to a rail or jumping over the Great Wall.

PDN: What are your plans going forward?

MB: I don’t know, my back’s kind of sore, I don’t know how long I can climb over fences and get chased by the cops, but I love being a skateboarding photographer. When I really started getting into photography it was because of skateboarding magazines, it was because of those photos Spike [Jonze] would shoot and Grant [Brittain] would shoot, that’s what really got me intrigued. I’m really stoked not only to be able to come out with a book but to have been around skateboarding professionally for the last 15 years so, I would like to keep doing it for as long as I can. If I don’t I would love to be around it somehow. I used to do a little commercial work when I lived in LA before I started working for DC full time, so that may be something I could get into, but I don’t know, just showing up at a shoot and having 40 people there and three assistants, it’s just not the same feeling as climbing over a fence in the middle of the night and getting away with a photo that looks exactly the way that you pictured it in your mind before you went to the spot. Nothing will ever beat that feeling whatever I end up doing. It’s hard to say, but I just can’t really fathom anything being more fun than that.

PDN: What advice would you give to aspiring skate photographers?

MB: Do it if that’s what you really want to be around. Everyone in that whole entire book is in there because they love skating more than anything. I think it’s like anything else, you have to really like what you shoot and you’ll be successful at it. For me, I was lucky in San Francisco because when I first moved there I didn’t shoot photos, I skated all the time, I got know everyone in the city, and then everyone was like, “Oh by the way Blabes has a camera,” so rather than folding t-shirts at the Gap I started shooting photos and that’s kind of how it all started. I think that would be my advice: Practice a lot, experiment, stand out and be a cool dude and love skateboarding.