5000 Words: Ben Colen

Posted on July 5, 2024 3:36 pm

We’re pleased to bring you the latest interview in our 5000 Words series, a closer look at some photos shot by Ben Colen, and the stories behind them. There are some amazing photos in here dating back to his early days behind the lens for the Crailtap family…

words and interview by Jacob Sawyer. Ben Colen in Pittsburgh. PH: Johnny Wilson

Ben Colen is an incredible photographer responsible for capturing a multitude of images of our favourite skateboarders. He is a photographer’s photographer, classically trained, with skills honed from submitting his work to mags like TransWorld, Big Brother, and Strength. This would lead to a staff position at Skateboarder for eight years followed by a matching stint over at the Crailtap camp, two roles that found him behind the lens for some of the best to ever do it. The decades he has dedicated to his craft have harvested so many iconic images that it was tough to narrow down exactly which photos to speak about. We left the ball in Ben’s court to see what he would pluck from his archives to expand upon and were excited about what came back.

It has been great to hang out with Ben over the years when different Euro excursions led to him visiting London. We have fond memories of the Static II era when Ben accompanied Josh Stewart for three weeks back in the Skateboarder days, the Slam shop playing host to the beginning and end of many days out filming in the city. Not much has changed in the grand scheme of things, Ben is still married to the very same game, waiting for the call, the meeting spot, and the day ahead. He continues to put in the work, as this article illustrates. There is some nostalgia of course, but in amongst it is a recent photo of Tyshawn Jones only someone with their feet on the ground could have captured, and a photo adding to the legend of Yuto Horigome snapped last year on a Nike SB trip.

Enjoy the curated discussion featuring photos hand-picked by Ben. His time in Los Angeles is well-represented by some epic photos of Aidan Mackey, Alex Olson, Anthony Van Engelen, and Cory Kennedy. The aforementioned Tyshawn photo and a Cyrus Bennett photo with a New York City backdrop balance things out, products of his return home to the East Coast. His appreciation for the Fourstar projects he was involved in shines through when speaking about a memorable shot of Ishod Wair with a plunger and a Mark Gonzales boardslide made possible by a Tom Sachs creation. Photos of Brian Anderson, Mike Mo Capaldi, Sean Malto, Rick Howard, and Vincent Alvarez are included in his selection, images made possible by time in the tour van. He also recalls an unsanctioned Raven Tershy moment that beggars belief. We hope you enjoy learning more about the work Ben chose for you…

Aidan Mackey – Tail Drop

This is in LA right by Echo Park lake. He likes to do all of these weird, gnarly drop-in things, and this is one of them. He’s tail dropping in from the bar at the top. This day is the slam footage that’s in his Blessed part. It’s basically a dirt mountain into a pretty main road so you have to wait for the timing and everything. I just love this photo because it looks like big wave surfing or something. It’s gnarly because you’re going super fast down it. He would keep eat shit coming off that ledge at the bottom over and over again. It was one of those weird days that was pretty entertaining. Logan Lara is filming in the foreground and Caleb Barnett is next to him. I think Max Palmer was there for this too, back when those guys rode for Call Me 917. They were in town filming and along for the ride.

“It generated so much dirt, this giant cloud of dirt was following him, this Pig Pen situation. Every time he slammed it was like an explosion”

There’s a smaller one of these on the other side that Aidan had already done but this was the big one he was trying to do. He is a pretty unique skater, there aren’t many people who are going to try to ride down this shit. They all used to live about a block away from this thing too so I think it’s something he had been eyeballing for a while. I met a lot of those guys when they were pretty young around Fairfax. I had definitely been out with them, even if I wasn’t taking pictures I had been out skating with them a lot. It was amazing watching Aidan do this, and take so many slams. It generated so much dirt, this giant cloud of dirt was following him, this Pig Pen situation. Every time he slammed it was like an explosion. I always liked this one because you can see just how steep it is, he had to powerslide through the dirt to line up making the drop. I just put this photo on Instagram. Sometimes it happens where I have these photos that I love, but for one reason or another they don’t end up going anywhere. I��ve printed this once quite big and it looks pretty rad printed in a larger format. That’s something that sucks now, a photo can just go straight to the gram when you would prefer they were looked at in a much bigger format. It doesn’t always happen though. They don’t get appreciated in the same way because you don’t take the time to stare at the photo. It’s so much nicer to see something printed, it’s also more exciting nowadays when it happens because it happens less frequently.

Alex Olson – Ollie

This is the photo that announced that Alex was going pro for Girl. We had been trying to shoot an ad photo for a while at this point. This was taken at the bottom of Manhattan Beach where there are all of these big hills that lead down to the beach. Directly up from where this photos was shot there was this big street gap Alex had wanted to ollie for the ad. This street gap sucked, there was a downhill runway to it, and you had to ollie off the downhill over this thing. It just sucked and it wasn’t working. He got pissed from trying it then bombed down the hill afterwards and ollied out of this kerb cut. Instantly I told him that it looked fucking sick, and we have to go and shoot a photo. He is one of my favourite people to shoot with even though we haven’t for a long time. We shot a few of these ollies, and we shot some other stuff too. I think he wanted something gnarly for the ad so he may have been a little disappointed in a way to have something simple but I have always loved a good ollie photo, it never gets old. This one was perfect with the scenery and everything, it just worked really well. It was a good luck situation that ended up working when something else didn’t.

“I have always loved staring at a photo of someone doing big ollie. When I was a kid I loved it and it still has the same effect”

For me an ollie photo is the most classic shit, I have always loved staring at a photo of someone doing big ollie. When I was a kid I loved it and it still has the same effect. When the ad ran it had Mike Mo [Capaldi], Sean Malto and Alex superimposed in the corner. That was because they surprised them together by announcing they were all pro when we were on an Australia trip in 2008. Alex already knew he was going to be turned pro but [Sean] Malto and Mike Mo [Capaldi] had no idea. It was cool being there when they did that. I worked at Girl from 2008 until 2015 so this was early on in my time there. Alex’s original idea for a photo would have been way gnarlier but this one is just so much better to me personally, simple but timeless.

Cyrus Bennett – Ollie to Wallride

Cyrus is ollieing over that pipe to wallride here, a photo of this trick ran in Thrasher but shot from the front. This is one of those photos where I really like the angle it’s shot from. You’ve got the city in the background, there are the two workers are filming him right there from behind the wall. It’s a shitty spot, one of those things where it looks like it’s a bump but it’s not a bump. It’s tall too, you’ve got to get over those pipes. It’s one of those situations where the other angle works better for the mag but I really like the alternative angle as well. It’s busy, there’s so much stuff to look at, you can see the hill which you can’t so much from the front. I like it sometimes when you can shoot this environmental thing that’s pretty interesting around the trick itself, it’s something that’s not always possible. A lot of the time you’ll go to a spot and there’s only one way to shoot it that really makes any sense, but this was one of those times where we got a couple. We had to go here more than once too which helps with looking at something from a different perspective. Magazines tend to want to place more emphasis on what the skater is doing because you only have so much space. I like the other angle a lot too but this is another look at a rad trick that tells more of a tale about the spot.

Brian Anderson

This is just a portrait of Brian that I like a lot. It was taken on this filming trip in Florida. Somewhere in the middle, in either Tallahassee or Gainesville, there are these freshwater springs. You can swim in them and they’re amazing, beautiful water. It looks like a swamp almost but the water is crystal clear, a really cool pace to visit. We went to this spot where you could jump off this dock. There were plants and swamp stuff floating on the top of the water. I remember Brian diving into the water and swimming under this stuff but he basically swam right into this rock and popped up with blood all over his face. It was weird, I have photos somewhere of him coming out of the water with a super bloody nose. I took this photo a couple of hours later at a gas station, the light was good so I wanted to shoot it real quick. It’s a portrait I’ve always liked.

You never really remember exactly when you met people for the first time but I definitely met Brian in the very early days of my time at Skateboarder magazine. I was shooting photos with him early on so we’ve known each other for over twenty years. He is one of the best people, and I’ve been lucky enough to shoot a ton of stuff with him over the years. He lives out here too, he has a place in Queens, and another in New Jersey so it’s cool getting to see him out here.

Anthony Van Engelen – Wallie

This photo ran as an Independent ad in 2013, it was shot when he was filming for Propeller, I remember Greg Hunt filming and Guy [Mariano] was with us. This thing was down at the Sears building, there’s an out ledge there that people skate on the other side. It’s what feels like an abandoned building in downtown LA but maybe it’s not. These weird pillars were there and someone had kind of Bondo’d the back side of it so you could ride up the bank. It’s one of those photos I love to take, it’s just a wallie but it’s huge, and it’s AVE who is one of my favourite people to shoot with. He is one of those people who always has cool ideas and does rad shit. This was shot late in the day so I think we would have been skating somewhere first, if Guy was with us then there would have definitely been something he wanted to do too.

“it goes back to looking at photos when I was a kid wondering how are they so high up in the air?…it’s still incredible to me and I’ll never get tired of it”

This thing was big, and the ground was horrible so he put in some work to do this but it wasn’t an all-day battle situation. Guy and AVE are great to skate with when they’re together because they’re both such focused skate rats, they’re driven to get what they came out to do but they’re funny together at the same time. This has the same appeal for me as the Alex Olson photo, it goes back to looking at photos when I was a kid wondering how are they so high up in the air? It’s the kind of shit that gets you stuck on it when you’re young. You remember that first HUF [Keith Hufnagel] ad for REAL where he’s doing that ollie in SF? Gabe Morford shot it, he’s so high in the air that you’re trying to figure out how it’s possible. I will always love seeing shit like that, so I enjoy getting to take those photos, it’s still incredible to me and I’ll never get tired of it.

Cory Kennedy – Caddy Ollie

This was amazing, it was shot at Gardener which is the table school everyone skates in LA, it’s also incidentally where my daughter ended up going to Elementary school which is pretty funny. We were just there one day, and it’s not the easiest in and out. The fence kinda sucks, it’s a pretty tall one to hop. Cory showed up this day with a full golf bag and hopped the fence with it. I don’t actually remember the exact reason for it. Elijah [Berle] was probably there that day and Logan [Lara], this was back when Elijah, Raven [Tershy], and Cory all lived together in Santa Monica. The original idea was probably to hit some golf balls around the schoolyard or something, then the idea to do this came up. He tried to ollie the table with it one time and ate shit. Those bags are so heavy but it was only a couple of tries before he did it. The whole situation was too funny, Cory is one of the funniest dudes to have on a session always. You can see the Jam Box on the table too, he probably went through about twenty of those speakers because he was always skating with them, and landing on them. That thing would always be on the session with us too. It was one of those funny, random days. I always hated climbing that fence with my camera bag in the first place so I have fond memories, and photos, of Cory climbing it with a golf bag in tow.

Jerry Hsu – Switch Frontside Crooked Grind

This ended up being a TransWorld cover and I was so happy with how this all worked out. Jerry is somebody who tries such fucked up tricks, and because of that, a lot of the stuff we would shoot required going to the spot a bunch of times to get the photo. For this one I’m pretty sure we had been there about three different times but on this visit everything just worked. The time of day was perfect, the light happened to work good, his outfit, just all of it worked really well. It was a trick where he kept almost doing it. He was landing switch and going back down that thing so he would be powersliding down it, or whipping out, it was definitely one of those torture yourself type tricks so it was pretty awesome we got this. On an earlier trip Jon Miner was filming, he brought a roll of twine or coarse string so he could tie it along a load of those poles in the background to try and stop his board going into the LA river if it shot out. One time it hopped over it and went down into the river anyway. That spot is so fucked.

I was always really stoked on this photo generally and something making the cover is always exciting, it’s never not going to be a really cool thing to see. I shot a few things here with Jerry over the years, he did a switch frontside 5-0 on it which was a Royal ad. He has done a few things there, Jerry will always do the most fucked up thing possible at a spot. Riding up that thing switch, going downhill and carving into it, landing back switch, everything about it is pretty insane. We had shot this already once but sometimes you look at the camera and just know you’ve got the photo. It’s one I was immediately happy with, whereas usually I find a lot of shit to nitpick.

“sometimes you look at the camera and just know you’ve got the photo”

It’s nice when it happens that you instantly like something. I still shoot film sometimes, not often skate photos, and it’s always fun to see what comes back. So it was exciting shooting skate photos on film, and getting the slides back but it was also nerve racking at the same time. Did the flashes go off? Did the lab fuck anything up? There were so many things you were stressed about before getting them back. So it’s cool to see if you like things like with this photo, it’s also cool to be able to adjust things on the fly instead of hoping a light meter is right. Shooting digital is different but I like it for sure, I’m not someone who has a problem with it. Shooting film meant maybe made you played things a bit safer, there were still people shooting some wild shit though, photos that I wouldn’t have risked taking or ideas I wouldn’t have thought of. I remember looking at Brian Gaberman photos in Slap early on, he would do some pretty crazy shit sometimes. Situations where someone is doing something gnarly and I would definitely have stressed out trying to capture it the way he did. Shooting digitally has made it kind of easier to experiment, and helps you to bail on an idea earlier if it’s not working. Also when you know for sure you have a photo you’re happy with you can try something else in addition.

Ishod Wair

This is a funny photo that I always liked because of the whole setting of it. We went to Philly because we needed to shoot Ishod and Gonz [Mark Gonzales] for a Fourstar thing. I was there with my friend Eric Anthony who was the Fourstar director back then. It was so fucking brick that day, it was unreal how cold it was when we got there. We tried to do some stuff outside but it was windy and just really miserable. Somehow I think Mark’s brother-in-law came and met us there when we were trying to skate. He taught at this private school, and it had this gym with an old floor that looked like it was from the 1800s or something. We went in there and I actually shot a skate photo of Mark ollieing a hurdle on this elevated running track. Mark and Ishod had been playing basketball a little bit, then because it’s Mark he was coming up with different challenges. They were both trying to get baskets by using these giant plungers. I was hanging out on this track shooting photos and it looked so cool with that checkerboard floor as a background. The photo doesn’t really explain itself but I always liked it. Doing Fourstar stuff was amazing, the trips were always so fun, such a good mix of people. I was really lucky to get to go on so many amazing trips. Everybody got along really well, and skated everything, it was one of those perfect storm things, always a great time. I feel like that came through too with all of the videos that [Aaron] Meza did. Mark [Gonzales] wouldn’t be on a lot of the trips but sometimes he’d show up for a couple of days and it was always so fun to have him around, his energy. Obviously getting to see him skate is just awesome still.

Mark Gonzales – Boardslide

This was when I still lived in LA but came to New York to do some Fourstar stuff. Eric Anthony was there, and [Aaron] Meza was filming, we shot some other stuff on this same trip. I remember on this night that Tony Ferguson also randomly happened to be in town so he was along for the ride, hanging out with us. I think Genesis [Evans] showed up at one point and was skating. Mark had this idea formulated, he’d seen this rail which was right by the building he lived in at the time, it was downtown, sort of near the Seaport. He had gotten this artist named Tom Sachs to build the ramp for him. He is a fine artist who has had big shows in galleries, and Mark got him to build him the ramp which is pretty funny in itself. He wheeled the ramp over from his apartment building a few blocks away. It was amazing to watch him skate this thing, Mark still eats shit when he’s trying stuff. He went down so fucking hard skating this thing, one of those ones where everyone is quiet for a second. But he just popped back up and got back to it. I don’t like seeing anyone eat shit, Mark’s older than me and takes serious slams but he’s one of those people who always seems to able to just shake it off in situations where a lot of people wouldn’t.

“He is also one of those people where it’s almost impossible to take a bad photo of him, I don’t think I have ever really seen one”

I feel lucky to have been able to shoot a bunch of things with him. Growing up there are a lot of things I have done I never thought I would have, and shooting a bunch of photos with Gonz is definitely on that list. The first time I shot with him was pretty random, back when I was working for Skateboarder but because of Fourstar I have ended up meeting up with him and hanging out. We would do day in the life style things or shoot things specifically for ads. He is obviously someone who always has cool ideas. He is also one of those people where it’s almost impossible to take a bad photo of him, I don’t think I have ever really seen one. This was a cool night, it was pretty late at night when he was skating this thing. The kicker itself is funny, it was pretty steep, built for the task. That artist made it so it was clean and white, it looked like it should have been in a gallery or something. It was a weird idea Mark had and he made it work. The rail is long, tall, and the curve itself is pretty extreme so it’s fucking gnarly. It was great to watch, it was also cool having Tony [Ferguson] there that night too because he’s funny as hell, a good addition to the session.

Mike Mo Capaldi and Sean Malto

This spot is in Kansas City, Raven [Tershy] had a Chocolate ad on the top bar there that Sam Muller shot. I actually shot a cover there of Vincent Alvarez doing a kickflip pivot on it. That might have even happened this same day, I can’t exactly remember. We were there on a filming trip and you can see all of the shit that was in the way, all of these car parts that we had to move out of there to be able to skate it. These dudes put this little lean-to piece of shit together and it was one of those opportunities where I knew I had to take a picture. They were best friends, they always roomed together on all of the trips so it was cool to capture them together like that. I watched them both grow up, it’s weird, there’s a lot of that stuff, friends I have made through skating because I’m taking pictures. Often they’re kids I have know since they were fifteen, it’s a trip. This was taken during the filming of Pretty Sweet, a specific Midwest filming trip. Cory [Kennedy] was on it, Jeron [Wilson], Elijah [Berle], Vince [Alvarez]. It was a big crew, we went through Kansas City, Chicago, and a few other places. Kansas City is always fun because [Sean] Malto is like the mayor, he has it all sorted out there so you eat a bunch of good barbecue, and do some fun shit.

Raven Tershy – Frontside Carve

This is fucked, it came about when they were working on intro ideas for Pretty Sweet. There was a week when we filmed a bunch of shit. Some of it ended up being little inserts in the video, him riding up the wall in slow motion appears briefly in the intro. This building was in Vernon which is like a little industrial zone in downtown LA. We just put these things there, they came on a flatbed truck, and we didn’t have a permit for any of it. We set the ramps up against this wall and Rick [Howard] towed him in on a Vespa. If the cops happened to come by we would probably have been arrested, there are these ramps, we’re in the middle of the street, all illegally. We managed to skate there for a while too. It’s so crazy what he’s doing, he basically came pretty close to grinding the roof of a building. I have always dug this one, Raven is always fun to shoot with, and always doing something that’s really photogenic generally, but this really is something you don’t get to see every day.

“It’s so crazy what he’s doing, he basically came pretty close to grinding the roof of a building”

It appeared in Thrasher but this is one where I think you need to see the real footage of it to totally understand, there’s footage from this whole day on Crailtap. I feel like this is something that could have thrown this in his part, it counts. On the same day we put the ramps in the middle of the street with a channel gap and Elijah [Berle] did a frontside air over everybody from ramp to ramp, they were literally blocking the whole street. It’s kind of crazy how long we were there with no appearance from the cops, I think we might have seen one but only after everything was all packed up and back on the truck.

Rick Howard

This a picture I like generally, it was taken in Copenhagen on a Fourstar trip when we went all over Scandinavia and to Germany for the Gang Of Fourstar video. Rick [Howard] loves fire, breaking shit, and being a fucking menace. Fire just looks so cool in photos to begin with but this is funny because I feel like Rick is so down for fireworks, fire, and causing a ruckus basically. This was a somewhat mellow bonfire when we got there but it got turned up pretty fast, hahaha. If you’re not there for any of this Rick is pretty reserved, he can be quiet, but when there’s mischief to be involved with he definitely gets a little sparkle in his eye. I’ve seen him do some pretty funny stuff for sure. It’s a good Rick explainer but fire always looks cool in pictures so I have a soft spot for that too I guess.

Tyshawn Jones – Ollie

This day was crazy, it happened last year. I was just hanging out at my house when Tyshawn [Jones] hit me up to see what I was doing. I asked what he was trying to skate and he explained that he wanted to ollie a $5million Ferrari. I was down obviously and asked where he wanted to meet. The car ended up parked on Lafayette Street which is where he skates the can a lot, it’s where the old Supreme shop was. His friend Steven Victor who is a record executive owned the car and said he was down to have him skate it but we had no actual plan. I got down there and met TJ when he was setting a board up, the car wasn’t there yet, and we were trying to figure out where to shoot it. We got him to park it sideways blocking off one lane of Lafayette Street, it was the same deal as the Raven photo, no permit. As soon as the car showed up there were people just gawking, that’s before the skate shit happened at all, people were tripping on the car so a crowd started forming. It was crazy. The whole process must have taken about an hour, and I didn’t see a cop even once the whole time we were there which was insane. We had to wait for the light every time but had to be careful to guide the traffic past the car because we were blocking the lane.

When the car showed up I was wondering how he was going to ollie the thing, it’s a super wide car on top of everything including how tall it is. Even if it was a block or something it would be an insane ollie but the fact it was this $5million car made it wild. It was crazy to watch it go down. I was nervous, he was nervous. It took four tries and the board hit the car twice, I was tripping when I saw that happen but he did it, and it was incredible. It was a surreal experience, another one I definitely felt lucky to be there for, a one-off for sure. I had tried to go skating earlier that day but nothing was really happening so I had returned home with no idea I would be shooting that later on. It was amazing how everything worked out. This photo never ran as anything, Tyshawn just wanted to put it on the gram and watch it go off. They might have posted the video of this twenty minutes after doing it or something like that. I knew even while I was shooting it that it probably wasn’t going to run anywhere, adidas ended up using it on their Instagram because timing-wise it would have come out so much later if they had run it in print. It was never in a magazine which is kind of wild but maybe one day it will appear in something as it’s definitely not something you see ever. It was a really cool thing to have happen.

“It took four tries and the board hit the car twice, I was tripping when I saw that happen but he did it, and it was incredible”

He had a couple of people there filming. Everyone in the crowd was filming on phones, when you look in the footage 90% of the tourist have their phones out. There were even a couple of paparazzi dudes there shooting just off to the left so it got shot every fucking which way. I’ve seen multiple videos posted but it’s surprising to me I haven’t seen any of the other photo angles pop up. It was crazy, maybe in China I’ve seen people doing stuff with a crowd like that watching but I don’t think I’ve ever watched somebody skate something with that many people standing around filming and taking pictures. Most of the time people don’t want anyone staring at them or taking pictures when they’re trying something. Before he even started he knew it was going to be crazy and that a crowd was guaranteed. The scene is cool, my only gripe is that there are these dudes in the background who double-parked a Range Rover, they’re blocking it in a way that pisses me off photo-wise but there was no controlling certain things. He’s soaring over that anyway, the ollie itself is really fucking ridiculous. The car’s width is almost a table lengthways and it’s taller than a table too.

Vincent Alvarez – Hell Hole bail

This is in Wyoming, the crazy thing about this one is that he got out of that completely fine. Vincent is one of the best people at bailing I’ve ever encountered in my life, he just sort of flipped out of it and landed unscathed. It was shot in 2009 when we were on a cross-country filming trip for Chocolate. Pretty Sweet was originally just going to be a Chocolate video so this may have been at that point although there were some Girl dudes with us. We had two vans on this trip, and one of them we got from Matix, and that thing was a fucking nightmare. There were constant issues with it to the point that someone forced us to pull over on the highway because the wheel was about to fall off and they could see it. That was a couple of days before this photo, we had to take it to some spot to be looked at. While we were there we tried to find a skatepark but the only one we could find was super janky. These local kids told us they knew of some spot and we had nothing to do. A lot of the time when random kids tell you they have a spot for you it turns out to be kinda shitty but then they took us to this place. It said “Hell Hole” over the entrance.

“A lot of the time when random kids tell you they have a spot for you it turns out to be kinda shitty but then they took us to this place”

It’s basically a full pipe but the walls are banked as you go towards it so it’s not a complete full pipe. That lighted area goes right up, it’s a big drain thing in the middle of this lake. You could look from the top and it’s wild because there’s basically a giant lake on top of you. It was amazing, one of those times you think you’re off to see some bullshit but it’s this incredible spot instead. It’s perfectly backlit, kind of a dream spot in many ways. I shot a couple of photos of Kenny Anderson there, I think one was a Chocolate ad and the other one was a Wallride cover or something like that. But this one, as far as bail photos go I have always loved this one, also the fact that he got away from it completely fine makes it even better.

Yuto Horigome – Lien Air

This has never run anywhere, it was taken on a Nike SB trip. I always loved it because I always thought that those Lien Airs are one of the coolest looking tricks. This one looks like some kind of Chris Miller thing to me. This was the first time I had been on a trip with Yuto [Horigome]. We were in Louisville and he wanted to skate this hubba. We went to check it out but you couldn’t skate it until after 11pm. So to fill time we went to check out the skatepark and this massive ramp was there, it’s probably 13 feet high, a huge vert ramp. He seriously just dropped in on it and did a perfect McTwist, over head high, on the second try. It was fucking crazy, I tried to shoot that but I don’t take a lot of photos of vert tricks and blew that one for sure. He did this Lien Air working up to the McTwist so I asked if I could shoot one of them, and he just did it so perfectly. It was funny because he skated the vert ramp for twenty minutes then went and slept in the van. Then we drove to the hubba and he just switch frontside bluntslid it. That was my intro to shooting with Yuto, that kid is insane! It was pretty memorable for sure.

“he skated the vert ramp for twenty minutes and then went and slept in the van. Then we drove to the hubba and he just switch frontside bluntslid it. That was my intro to shooting with Yuto”

I don’t get to shoot something like this very often so it’s so fun to try and do it, also just to watch it happening. He is so good, I would love to see Yuto come out with a full vert part. He is so good at skating that shit, it’s really crazy, then you see his street stuff and it’s super gnarly too. He rips at vert, and he’s doing it padless. Rolling in off that roll in too is just gnarly. That roll in ramp you can see to the left didn’t use to have any wood on the side of it, and you could see right through that skeleton of the ramp. We heard that more than one time a couple of kids tried to butt slide down it, panicked, put their hands out, and had their fingers cut off by the steel skeleton. The local kids were telling us this story, then eventually they put a piece of wood there to stop that happening, so gnarly. Back to Yuto though, this was an incredible thing to witness and take pictures of, iIt was really fun. There aren’t many trips where you end up at a vert ramp. I got the lip of the ramp in there too, just squeaked it, haha.

Huge thank you to Ben Colen for digging into his archives and setting aside time for a conversation about some of his favourite photos. Follow Ben on Instagram, check out his amazing artwork, and see more photos on his website. Be sure to read his Lightbox Interview from 2020.

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