Capturing London's Female Skateboarders in Morning Light
A local park, early light, and no one performing
As the world began to reopen post-pandemic, I was drawn to the dynamic world of skateboarding, and I started a project photographing female skateboarders in my local London park. These sessions, bathed in the soft glow of early morning sunlight, let me explore the interplay between natural light and movement.
Early was deliberate. The park is close to empty at that hour, the sun comes in low and sideways across the concrete, and best of all, nobody is watching. Skateparks can be self-conscious places. At seven in the morning they aren't. What I got was a group of women skating for themselves rather than for an audience, which is a different thing to photograph entirely.
So the series moves between two registers. There's the physical fact of the sport: a foot pushing off across sunlit concrete, trucks and wheels worn down to the metal, a deck covered in stickers propped against a leg. And there's everything around it, sitting on the ramp edge with a phone between runs, pulling a shirt on, two skaters at the top of a bank waiting their turn, graffiti and trees behind them. The second set is the reason the first set works.
There's more of London's skate scene in this Clissold Park series, at the elite end with Team GB's Tommy Clavert, and on two wheels in my BMX and skatepark work. There's park basketball in the same spirit. More across the sports photography portfolio, or talk to me about a commission.