Oliver Barton
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This week's photographic memory features an E100VS chrome of Fred Gall yanking a noseblunt into a transitional bench sculpture somewhere on the East Coast in July 2007. I've always been a huge fan of East Coast skate trips, but getting to take one with a legend like Fred Gall really put the icing on the cake. Having been such a Fred fan growing up, seeing him ripping on this trip was like getting to observe a snow leopard in it's natural environment after years of watching them on the NatGeo channel.
This was to be the last filming trip for Inhabitants and in the final months leading up to the deadline, Freddy had taken a pretty healthy approach to how he was living his day-to-day life so his productivity had gone through the roof and Fred became the driving force behind almost everything on this trip. We had been checking out a few different spots that night but no one was really feeling anything, it was the height of summer and we were all feeling pretty fried from the long days in the sun, but out of the blue Fred had dipped behind a church building for a snoop and come up on this skateable memorial. As cool as the spot looks at first glance, closer inspection shows it's definitely ripe for an accident: if you don't make the initial drop into the tighter and rougher than it looks transition, any slam that involves you putting a hand down on the edge of any of those bricks inscribed with dead people's names will result in grazing blood shed, and even if you make the drop, any slight veering to either side will result in a truck grinding stop 'n' pitch. The final x factor exacerbating these issues of steering accuracy was the darkness: a couple of 200ws Lumedyne flashes have lit the spot up for the photo, but Freddy wasn't ready to go through the generator set-up since we'd have to get the lights around the back of the building, so that little fluorescent light on the wall in the background and a poxy little on-camera VX light would be his only illuminators after he'd been blinded by my flashes popping off in the darkness. To put it in context, my Lumedynes are probably a good 20 times more powerful than the average flash on a point and shoot camera, so go outside tonight and pop one off in your face and see how long it takes before you can see again and then multiply that by 20. Suffice to say the 1/3000 of a second that we're looking at here is probably the last moment Fred can see properly until after he's rolling away.
Fred has a long history of experience in these situations, I had his Slap cover yanking off the top rope into a ditch in Albuquerque that Lance Dawes shot back in 1997 on my wall forever, so I was not too worried for him and it only took a couple of zoom outs off the end before Fred was riding away clean and ready to figure out the next Gatorade stop as soon as his retinas recovered. Fred Gall has been pro for almost two decades now, he's been here that long because skateboarders will always be magnetically attracted to the street rogues like Freddy who make it look so uniquely personal and timeless by letting their personality and environment speak in the way that they skate. I praise the Skate Gods for Fred Gall and the opportunity to see this wild animal in it's indigenous habitat.
More Photographic Memories:
Eric Koston
Shane Cross
Rick Howard
Words & photo / BARTON
