Boarding. Not Boring.

Bruce Forster, the head honcho here at Viewfinders, is not the type of guy you'd expect to see at a skate park (unless you were in trouble and he was your angry dad coming to pick you up). No, we usually find him out in the high desert of Oregon and Washington in a helicopter photographing wind farms, or knee deep in soot getting a compelling shot of a coal mine. Bruce never ceases to surprise me when I arrive at the studio and he sits me down to show me all the graffiti photos he snapped over the weekend or the Erotic Ball he attended at the Crystal Ballroom.

Now, let's get this straight, Bruce is no skateboarding photographer...well, at least he doesn't call himself one. But, for someone who doesn't know anything about skateboarding or the culture surrounding it, he sure does know how to make it look good. And, if you think about it, skateboarding and riding in a helicopter both fall into one similar category, they're exciting, extreme activities.

An old, hip friend of Bruce's, Larry King (not the one on TV), was the first to turn him onto these "other" cultures including skateboarding and graffiti art. These ways of life are different from Bruce's everyday world and, as a compulsive shooter, feed his need to capture.

Photographing skateboarders is not an easy task. Knowing the exact moment to shoot a trick can be, well, tricky. Sometimes it's all about whether or not a skater lands it right. For a first time, Bruce did these skaters justice. Look for more from Pier Park Skate Park and Tigard Skate Park in the next week on our new (and very much progressed) website.