Ryan Toyama 
@udonmoodles
"There are certain events in life that you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing. One of those events for me was the day of the O.J. Simpson car chase. A group of us headed down to A'ala park to go skate. We parked our cars in a lot across the street. From there we went into a motel called Town Inn to grab some cokes from their vending machine before heading to the park. They had a TV mounted on the wall in the lobby. Whoa is that O.J.? It felt surreal. Where’s he going? Look at all the cops just following him! We stared at the screen for a while flabbergasted like many people were that day. Then we grabbed our cokes and skated across the street.

When I think about the O.J. chase it instantly jogs my memory and I get that nostalgic feeling of how we used to skate A'ala park daily back in 1994. Shortly after I decided to take a photography course while in college. My dad had a Canon AE-1 camera laying around that he let me borrow. My first thought was obviously to take skate photos of my friends and document what was around me. I soon realized however that skate photography wasn’t that easy. I remember feeling rushed as I set up. How am I going to shoot this? What’s the best angle? What shutter speed do I use? Skaters really don’t give a shit. They just wanted to skate. I almost felt like a hindrance at times as I tried to learn on the fly.

When the time came to develop the negatives there was an excitement, but also a nervousness going into a pitch black room wondering if you’re loading your film correctly into the canister.  The utter disappointment when you took it out and the negatives were stuck together. If it was good you made a contact sheet to see if you have anything worthy. Many mistakes were made. Bad compositions, bad lighting and bad exposures. Get into the darkroom I guess. Time to dodge and burn. Then watch the magic happen as you dip the photo paper into the developer and see the image appear before your very eyes. The following is a collection of images from circa 1995 to 1998.

Conor McGivern 
@treevisions

"Although I've been interested in photography since high school, it always took the backseat to videography. Video equipment is heavy enough so I never bothered bringing out any photography gear on the skate session. It wasn't until I got an Olympus Mju from a friend that I started shooting photos again. The small lightweight point and shoot easily fit into my camera bag and I'd snap a few photos before switching to the camcorder. These were shot on either the Olympus Mju or more recently, the Nikon 28ti."