Our latest “5000 Words” photo feature is with Kyle Seidler, someone whose prolific output regularly lights up our feed and the pages of our favourite magazines. Find out more about Kyle and the photos from his archives that he selected for us…
Words and interview by Jacob Sawyer. Kyle Seidler in Mammoth captured by Ryan Lay
Kyle Seidler has shot a wealth of incredible photographs of some of the best skateboarders out there and he’s just warming up. His job, and missions outside of it are continually presenting golden opportunities for his perfectionist eye to capture. Kyle has been good enough to let us use some of his images here over the years, we thought it was high time to connect so he could expand on some of his photos. Some he selected for the story behind them, some because they are lesser-spotted, and some simply because they’re his favourites. It was a pleasure to hear him wax lyrical about his work, a role that keeps reminding him he’s in the right place as his path unfolds.
Kyle grew up in West Chicago, Illinois, a suburb that’s 45 minutes outside of the city. He was gifted a Birdhouse Tony Hawk complete by his cousin and soon after witnessed his friend’s sister launching out of a plastic ramp set up on a neighbourhood kerb. He was sold on skateboarding from that moment on. In freshman year at high school photography entered the picture and he shot film with a Canon AE1 for as long as he could with the lenses at his disposal. When he inherited a grip of older Nikon lenses from his aunt who was a wedding photographer he bought a Nikon D40 and put them to work, shooting digital while perfecting his manual focus technique. This would be how he cut his teeth, exploring skate photography with his friends as subjects. Kyle remains thankful that he chose that Nikon back then because he did so at a crossroads where that investment could easily have been a sub-par video camera, changing his whole trajectory.
Coming up in the early 2000s he drew inspiration from the local scene which centred around RQ Boardshop, and his subscription to all the magazines. He cites The Skateboard Mag as being a big influence, and enjoyed trying to reverse-engineer the photos Mike O’Meally, Mike Blabac, Ben Colen, and Atiba Jefferson shot. Oliver Barton’s Hasselblad photos also made a big impression on his young mind. It would be local photographer Bart Jones who became a mentor of sorts, someone who was busy carving the course he wished to follow, and capturing the best skateboarding going down on home turf. He would also pave the way for Kyle’s first proper published photo to appear in the pages of the mag he had once pored over the most. Having relocated to NYC Kyle shot Antonio Durao switch 360 flipping over the fish market gap on Washington Ave, a photo that was destined to appear in The Skateboard Mag. Interestingly Antonio Durao had double-dipped on this mission and a Joe Monteleone photo of the same trick ran concurrently in Transworld, a rare win-win for everyone involved. Kyle’s first photo had made it into the mag, and more were to follow as he continued send in submissions while working as a photo-retoucher for Macy’s.
In 2014 everything changed when he was brought in at Sole Technology as an assistant photographer for their e-commerce team. While shooting product for Etnies, éS, Emerica, and Altamont he jumped at opportunities to get out in the field when other in-house photographers were swamped. An initial portrait of Andrew Reynolds for a catalogue snowballed into Kyle becoming a staff photographer. This meant he was now out in the streets every day instead of being in the office, a role he continues to enjoy today for the Nidecker Group. He has spent over a decade shooting for the three shoe brands, a role that provides him with a diverse array of talented skateboarders to shoot, different vans, different missions. Alongside that, as this article will expand upon, his freelance work also continues to find him in all kinds of situations, claiming covers of Thrasher and Closer along the way. The visual feast Kyle has selected for us here speaks volumes and it was fascinating hearing his take on being behind the lens for all of the following moments…
Andrew Reynolds – Frontside Flip
Any time you get to shoot Andrew Reynolds doing a frontside flip you know you have a special photo, it’s like shooting Michael Jordan doing a slam dunk, it’s such an iconic form. This is a photo I shot with Andrew in Calgary on an Emerica trip where we drove across Canada to Vancouver, and then from Vancouver to LA. It was a very long trip. This is him frontside flipping against the Calgary skyline, I don’t think this ever made it to print. That spot was crazy too, it’s like a dream spot, there are a bunch of these wooden banks and the planks are all perfectly smooth, riding over them feels so nice. If it existed in the States it would be skate stopped immediately with every skater flocking to it.
So many people were on this trip; this is when Kader [Sylla] and Zach Allen and a bunch of others were still on the team. We also had the Canadian distributors rolling with us so we had multiple vans. With that many people it’s already chaotic on top of that I can be pretty slow setting up/taking down my gear. This trip was very run and gun, on this day we were trying to get as many spots in as we possible before having to make this demo. After everyone squeezed in last tricks at that spot they started rushing into the van so we wouldn’t be late. I was packing up my stuff, then I look up and all the vans are gone. In the chaos they had forgotten me at the spot! Typically I would have at least the filmer breaking down too but on this day I was legit just standing by myself. I could still see one of the vans at the end of the road and I just started sprinting towards it and yelling, and waving my arms. I eventually caught up and was able to stop them. I threw myself in the van, piled onto people’s laps, and threw my bag and flashes across the seats. I would have been so screwed standing alone in the middle of Calgary with all my stuff.
Arin Lester – Frontside 180 – Fakie Nosegrind
Arin has so much determination, it’s so rad. She is a hard person to take a photo of, but any time I do get to take one it’s always awesome. This was on a trip to Toronto with the Sci-Fi Fantasy team. It ended up being printed in our tour article from the trip in Thrasher. Arin [Lester] is one of my favorites to watch skate but she can be tough to take photos of. She likes to do manuals, and tech tricks that are amazing but difficult to shoot photos of. This was nearing the end of the trip and she had no photos at this point. I kinda let her know everyone had something already and we should try to get a photo today. I think Jerry [Hsu] mentioned that to her too and it lit a fire within her to get motivated. We found an out ledge that she tried to kickflip-frontside-tailslide but it just wasn’t really working out. The prospect of finding a spot for her to get a photo was starting to look dour. Then we ended up back at Simcoe, a popular Toronto plaza with ledges where Ryan [Lay] had been trying a line. She was messing around on the manny pad and I suggested she skated this gap from the manny pad to the ledge. It’s a pretty gnarly gap to clear on to a ledge so she was apprehensive, We really started to push her to try and get a trick on the ledge. She tried gap to noseslide and got into one… Sometimes I’ll pitch an idea for a photo and the skater can’t really see how it looks in their head but I knew this was going to look great with the CN Tower in the background. Sometimes the skater feels the juice isn’t worth the squeeze but I assured her it was going to be great so she started battling. We were trying to get this done but we had to get to this big dinner Jerry [Hsu] had set up with his friend Matty Matheson at his restaurant. We hadn’t told her but it was going to be her going pro surprise party.
“Sometimes I’ll pitch an idea for a photo and the skater can’t really see how it looks in their head but I knew this was going to look great with the CN Tower in the background”
She went at it for some time and then at the very end of the day with her energy absolutely depleted she landed it. She was so happy that she got the trick but so beat at the same time, almost to the point of being ill. We made our way to Matty’s restaurant and when we got there she was pale and immediately needed to go to the bathroom to puke; that trick took everything she had. Jerry stopped her and was like “just wait a sec.” Matty came out and was talking to everyone and giving a little speech. She was listening but distracted, just so dead, while Matty was insinuating to Arin that this was a big night. She was just staring at the table. Then her best friend Bri [Brianna Delaney] came out holding her board and handed it to her, and she was so out of it she didn’t register what was happening. It was so funny. Jerry [Hsu] had flown Bri out, she’s standing there handing it to her and Arin was just staring at the board. When she did finally figure it out there were cheers and hugs, and it was a happy scene. After a noticeable amount of time passed by, maybe about thirty minutes of talking to everyone, she turns and says “wait Bri’s here?”, in the shock she didn’t realise Bri was there. It was such a mixture of emotions from battling that trick to turning pro, it was awesome!
Barney Page – Hippy Jump
This was taken in Manhattan, up towards Harlem on another really long trip, we went from Boston, to New York, to Connecticut over the course of two weeks or more. Before we ended up in New York we were in Boston and I got a call from my aunt to say that my mum needed to have quadruple bypass surgery and that I should probably fly home to see her because it was really serious. So I ended up having to fly to Chicago for that mid-trip. It was super scary but everything worked out okay and I flew back to meet everyone in NYC, just running all over the place. This day was in the dead of summer, it was super hot, and it gets so muggy out there. I had just gotten back on the trip and was in a crazy place emotionally because of the heavy Chicago side mission. We were skating to the subway from another spot, the Ogden bank to diagonal down ledge that everyone skates. We didn’t get anything there but on the way to the train we passed by this hydrant and the cap was off. Barney [Page] hippy jumped the water first try just skating past it and I instantly told him we have to shoot a photo of that. Then Barney did it again even more stylish, bending his legs and sucking them up as high as he could. This is the first shot, one try, he just did it for the photo and it’s one of those rare moments where the photo worked absolutely perfectly. I looked at the camera and told him we had nailed it. Shooting that photo really pulled me out of that crazy emotional funk and It’s probably one of my favourite photos I’ve taken.
Chris Joslin – Crowdsurfing in Nanjing
This is such a funny photo, Chris Joslin floating across a sea of Chinese people. It was taken in Nanjing on an Etnies trip. We had a tour planned out around the different distributors out there in the most remote cities in southern China. All of the demos we had to do were in malls. It’s awesome when you do demos or events out there, it’s so different. Everyone is so excited to see the skaters, they were treated like rockstars. It felt like that late nineties, early 2000s level of hysteria. I told [Chrs] Joslin to jump backwards off this stage after this demo and just crowd surf. Everyone went nuts and carried him across their heads full crowd surf style.
The distributors there partied so hard and they wanted us to party as much as possible. I’m sober now but I was definitely drinking back then. One night while we were there we went out to a club. Nick [Garcia], Barney [Page] and me were on the dance floor. We grabbed this bottle of Cristal champagne off this shelf, popped it, and just started drinking it. We were spraying it too, just being the worst Americans you could imagine. It was so obnoxious, dancing in this club, spraying champagne. We were dancing for a while and then we went to leave the club. Nick [Garcia] and I turn around and realise that Barney is being dragged off by these huge men in suits, they looked like the yakuza or something. Each of them had one of his arms and they were dragging him down this hallway. I remember Nick shouting “don’t go down there!”. We followed him to see where he was being taken, I look back and there are two more of these big dudes behind us blocking our way out. We go down this stairwell into the basement thinking these are probably the last people we’re ever going to see.
“We go down this stairwell into the basement thinking that these are probably the last people we’re ever going to see”
We end up in this control room that is filled with monitors, and also filled with a bunch more big scary dudes in suits. These guys were surrounding us and it literally felt like a scene from a movie. Like how a super villain will spin around in a chair and look at you with a cat in their lap, it was like that. This tiny woman turned to us, she’s sitting there surrounded by these guys and she says “You Americans come here, you want to have fun. It’s okay but we saw what you did!” We were playing dumb but she played back the footage of us grabbing the champagne and apparently they were super expensive bottles for the bottle service tables. We blew through what was probably a $500 bottle of champagne. She told us we were going to have to pay for it but none of us had any money on them apart from Nick. He gave them everything he had in his pockets, if he hadn’t, who knows what they would have done? It wasn’t looking good. So they took the money he had which definitely wasn’t enough but it saved us and we got out of there. This photo will always represent the start of that evening for me.
Julian Lewis – Fakie Flip
This was taken at Roosevelt Island in New York City. This spot is a super gnarly bust, no-one can ever skate it. We were on an Etnies trip and we agreed to do this thing with Jenkem. They explained that it was a notorious bust but that we would go there and document the experience. In my head we were going to have permission or some kind of in that would mean we could skate there. However, they just meant we would be taking our chances and filming what went down knowing It would be next to impossible without getting a ticket. I had known of the spot from living in NYC for a few years and the idea of skating there was off the table because it was impossible. It felt like a Navy SEAL stealth operation, you could only enter the spot by water. The part we wanted to skate is gated off, and the gate goes right out to the rocks on the water. To get in that way you have to walk out towards the water and around the gate. It was suggested that we take a boat out there which would have been crazy. We went there at sunrise. we got around the gate and made our way in but there is constant security watching.
We got in there, surprisingly without any resistance. When we got in there was a guy in a golf cart so we hid behind some bushes. Then he passed and drove far away, suddenly it seemed like it could be chill. It’s like 6am, the whole city is just waking up. We got set up, Julian went up there to take a look, eyed it up, and just went straight for a fakie flip. He probably tried it six or seven times and then the photo is of the one he landed. Once he landed the fakie flip he said he wanted to try a back three real quick. I thought we should have gone, we got lucky, let’s take the win and get out of there. He did it so fast and it was perfect. Once he landed that we skated over to where we came in and when we got around the corner there were cop cars and a bunch of cops at the gate—perfect! I thought let’s see what happens, maybe they’ll be really nice. They opened the gate for us then asked us about how we got in. One of the guys from Jenkem told them his buddy dropped us off here in his boat. 
This confused the cops and I have no idea exactly why he made up that story. Maybe he thought it would sound better. I think they were on the edge of arresting us but they ended up giving us tickets instead. We were all denying having any ID on us which was when they gave us an ultimatum, we had to give them ID or they would have to arrest us. They wrote us all tickets but they didn’t have an amount on them which was when they told us we had to go to court. Great! Now I have to fly back to New York.
“the idea of skating there was off the table because it was impossible. It felt like a Navy SEAL stealth operation, you could only enter the spot by water”
We flew home and waited for a court date. Etnies were cool enough to pay for us flying back, it was when Aiden Campbell was the team manager. On the day we had court he booked us an AirBnB for the night. We literally flew up there for less than 24 hours. So we got to court and it was an actual court where people are showing up for serious crimes. The public defender was going around speaking to each person and asking what they were in for. We explained that we were skateboarding where we shouldn’t have been and he was like “Excuse me? Are you kidding me?” He couldn’t believe it and assured us that nothing was going to happen. Our case wasn’t split up into individual offences it was us as a group. So the three of us are there dressed up nice, then the judge called us all forward together “Julian Lewis, Aidan Campbell, Kyle Seidler”. We all went up and stood in front of the judge. The public defender explained to the judge what we had done and he told us we were free to go straight away, no fine, nothing. They just gave us a warning. It is insane because we had to fly to New York to get it. It wasn’t all a waste though because we went to the Brooklyn Zoo straight after that before flying back home.
Justin “Figgy” Figueroa – Nollie 5-0
Figgy [Justin Figueroa] is one of my favourite people to shoot photos with, he is just so badass and will try the craziest shit. We were in Mexico for this Emerica trip. It was specifically a Collin [Provost] and Figgy trip. Going to Mexico with them, was an experience. It was Collin’s favourite thing, he just wanted to go to Mexico, party, and skate. I remember passing by this spot and Figgy saying we have to try and skate this thing. As he started skating it I began to smell something and figured something was burning. I look over in the background and there was a building behind him completely engulfed in flames, fully on fire. Some of the flames were licking up as high as the trees. It was far enough away that we weren’t in any immediate danger, and I saw fire trucks starting to arrive. I wasn’t panicking because it all seemed contained but I realised that if I positioned myself in a certain way I might be able to get the fire in the photo. As soon as I moved it was the nollie 5-0 he ended up landing. It was funny because I was shooting a sequence at first but really wanted a photo with the fire in the background and all the smoke. So I repositioned and timed it to where he is just getting into the 5-0 out of the nollie. He landed it on that very try and although I didn’t get any flames the smoke looks so surreal against the blue sky, I was very happy with how it turned out.
“they give you a shot, smack you over the top of the head with a rag, then blindfold you, grab your head, and shake it”
Another funny story about this photo is that after this was taken we went down to the beach. This was right around Rosarito which is Baja California almost, it’s basically the West Coast of Mexico, it’s a few hours from San Diego. There is a chain of bars across the US and Mexico called Papas & Beer. It’s this loud chain of bars and one of the gimmicks they do is they give you a shot, smack you over the top of the head with a rag, then blindfold you, grab your head and shake it. It’s awful, it’s terrible, just a recipe to get sick. I was hungover already, while shooting that photo even I was so dead, it was the last day. They made me do that thing, this huge Mexican dude gave me a shot of tequila, smacks me with a rag then blindfolds me and shakes my head. I was on the verge of throwing up. Then we began driving back home. If you drink the water in Mexico it’s possible to get really sick and I didn’t drink any but I must have had some ice or something and I was getting terribly ill. Ryan Lay was at my house which was in Long Beach at the time house sitting because we we were going to skate when I got back. He had gotten free tickets to go to Disneyland and we had both never been so I told him that when I got back from Mexico we would go. I got home that night and I was so sick, I was vomiting from both ends of my body, it was so bad and I was so sick. I barely slept that night and then in the morning Ryan comes in my room and is like “you ready to go to Disneyland?” He was bummed and said he’d just go there by himself. I rallied because I couldn’t let him go by himself. We went, I was running to the toilet every few minutes but we fully went on all the rides and everything while I experienced what they call Montezuma’s Revenge. So I came home with the nollie 5-0 but I also came home with E. Coli poisoning.
Kader Sylla – Board Focus
I really like this photo of Kader [Sylla], it looks like he’s upset but he’s so happy because he had just gotten a trick. For some reason when he landed it he was so stoked that he snapped his board. The photo is funny because he was so small at the time and it took everything he had to snap that board. He managed to snap it which may have taken more than just that one jump. He was so excited, it’s wild to look at this photo now because I got to work with Kader on Emerica trips and projects when he was so small, so to see him grow up and be smoking weed and driving fancy cars is so funny. He was this little guy riding around with Andrew Reynolds eating so much candy, just being a little kid. It was amazing getting to know him in his formative years. There’s no great story behind this, I just always enjoy looking at this photo.
Kevin “Spanky” Long – Boardslide
This is one of my favourite photos of Spanky [Kevin Long] that I have taken. We were shooting the campaign for the Emerica KSL shoe. I had this spot that i wanted him to skate up in the Silverlake hills where you could potentially get the LA skyline in there if you frame it right. I shot it fisheye too and that is the angle which ended up being the ad. I always really liked this version of it, but the fisheye version shows the shoe well. That ended up working for the ad I suppose but I think the long lens version is just so much more epic. It’s one of those situations.There have definitely been other times when you have to shoot a photo a certain way to showcase a product you’re selling. 
That’s a normal thing that I’ve gotten used to but sometimes it’s just a shame because you have a vision for something that would look so much sicker but won’t work for the project. In that situation I always try to shoot the other version just so we have it. When you’re shooting to sell product those shots unfortunately get relegated to a box, that’s the weird balance. A lot of the time those other photos don’t get seen. It’s something I think about when I’m framing a photo. I will think that something looks cool but then I’ll shoot another version of it sometimes if a skater is trying a trick for a while. I’ll experiment because I know I have the shot but often won’t like the alternative as much. Then someone else will see that second angle and like it way more. It’s always funny because in my head it will be so clearly not as good but another person will have a completely different take on it. They’ll like the long lens version of something that is clearly shot at a fisheye spot. Certain things in my head are so objective but then you realise that isn’t the case.
“In that situation I always try to shoot the other version just so we have it… A lot of the time those other photos don’t get seen”
Sometimes I will overthink stuff too, you get tunnel vision and obsess over the way you want this photo to look. You can get hyper-fixated on it and sometimes that will lock you into a place where you’re unable to see other options. That happens to me a lot and I try to be conscious enough to snap out of it.
Nick Garcia – Powerslide
Whenever I can shoot a photo that would look nice even by itself without a skater like a cityscape or mountain, but can have skateboarding happen in the image, that’s something I’m always going to want to do. We had been skating a spot down at the bottom of this hill and I was shooting some portraits of Nick [Garcia] in front of the skyline with his shirt open, I was kind of misdirecting him to shoot some silly photos. This motorcycle came cruising around the hill and it was slowly turning. I could tell that it was going to happen and I had enough time to tell Nick that he should just powerslide towards it. 
The motorcycle was going slow enough that I knew he had time to do that and that the bike wouldn’t hit him. Nick just stuck his butt out and did the slide, it was the perfect timing with the motorcycle that just happened to drive by. The way the driver is looking at him too he’s like “What is this guy doing? What is this guy’s deal?” The theme there with that lovely cityscape background, if I can get a moment in front of that then it has all the elements covered, exactly what I want out of a photo. I wanted that cityscape, and the Miami Vice shirt, Nick [Garcia] was in full Miami mode. This was actually on a [Chris] Joslin trip. Joslin had this Instagram super fan and the guy had his tattoo parlour come over and give everyone tattoos. Both Nick [Garcia] and Barney [Page] got “Poop” tattooed on the inside of their bottom lip. The guy came over and everyone got tattoos, it was crazy.
Pedro Barros – Frontside 180
This is so gnarly! This was on a Thrasher Vacation trip to Germany and this spot was in Hanover. The spot is insane. This giant brick pyramid on the side of a bridge. Pedro [Barros] was so fired up. I was skating a spot just down the street with Ville Wester, then someone came to see me to tell me that Pedro was going to try a completely psycho trick so I skated over there. The guy who drove the scooter to tow him in was just some random guy that they pulled over on the street. They asked him to help out and he was super down to do it. Pedro was getting the tow in and he didn’t try it very many times at all. On one of the first few tries he just did it, perfectly. 
On the other side of the pyramid is a few feet of broken brick so there’s a gap to clear as well. He was bombing down the other side switch and it was a perfect disaster scenario where he was riding towards this lamppost. He tried to bail and kind of jumped up but he couldn’t decide which side of the sign he wanted to jump past so he hit the sign with his ribs and spun around it. His arm was like a hook and his armpit swung him around the way a horseshoe would around a pole. He ended up breaking a rib, it was so gnarly. Somebody called an ambulance and he got taken away. Then a few hours later he turned back up and hung around for the whole rest of the trip, he had a broken rib but he was such a trooper for taking it. He had got a few tricks already, he killed it that trip and that was a crazy way to end it. Luckily he’s pretty buff, he is muscular enough that it kind of saved him but he hit that thing so hard, it was wild. On that trip I saw some of the craziest skating ever because it was such a good mix of different skaters.
Ryan Lay – Frontside noseblunt slide
This one was crazy. My close friend who I grew up with lives in Alaska and I have some family out there so I have a weird connection to Alaska. I also really enjoy the outdoors, and outside of skateboarding backpacking and hiking are hobbies of mine. I’ll visit my friends in Alaska and go hiking or backpacking when I have the opportunity. This was a trip when me and my wife decided to make the journey to Alaska. I was telling Ryan Lay about our plans, told him he could come if he wanted and he said he would love to. He tagged along on this outdoorsy vacation with my wife and it turned into us shooting an entire interview on the trip. We would just stop off at spots that we had seen driving around. This one in particular is on the Prince William Sound, an inlet off the ocean. We were on the way to Seward which is in the south. We stopped off and went to this town because my friend told me it was super interesting. It has a population of about 200 people and they all live in this one building which contains a school and a market. It’s really crazy, a small fishing community with a port. It’s beautiful there, this quiet little town.
“It was pretty cool to skate a spot that you know no-one else has ever skated, or shot a photo of someone skating. That’s a very special opportunity when it presents itself”
We were there during the shoulder season in October so it was pretty wet, cold, and there was nobody about. Typically in the summer that town [Whittier] will pop off, there are shops and restaurants but they were all closed when we were there because it was out of season. It sorta felt like a ghost town. Our surroundings were beautiful but also there was an eerie feeling of isolation. We were walking around and exploring when we came across this dock which had a ramp. We found a table nearby which we dragged over and Ryan ollied it, the photo just looked insane. He figured out that he could do a nosebluntslide just when a police officer rolled up. He was so baffled, you could tell that no-one has ever picked up a skateboard or even seen a skateboard in that town. It was so foreign to him and he wanted to know what we were doing. I explained it to him, that we had come from Los Angeles and Arizona to visit, and that Ryan is a pro skater who wanted to quickly shoot a photo on this thing. He told us it was fine and just to stay out of the way when any boats come in. He was totally fine with us shooting it and I ended up sending him a print of the photo afterwards because he said he’d like to see it when we were finished. It was pretty cool to skate a spot that you know no-one else has ever skated, or shot a photo of someone skating. That’s a very special opportunity when it presents itself. We hadn’t planned to shoot an interview on that trip, it just happened, which is the coolest way to do an interview in my opinion. In the Thrasher article Ryan said that every spot felt like a gift, and that couldn’t be more true. Every spot was this little gem, a little untouched gift and it was completely organic how every spot came about on that trip. Also any time I can shoot Ryan doing any kind of noseblunt I’m very happy.
Ryan Lay – Ramallah streets
Another Ryan Lay photo for good measure. When Ryan still rode for Etnies he invited me to meet him out in Ramallah. I was skating with him a lot at the time and still skate with him now working on Sci-Fi Fantasy stuff. We’re still good buddies and work on projects pretty often. This was taken in 2020 and it was while we were working on the Wellspring article. At the time I wasn’t very educated on Palestine or Israel’s history of occupation in the region. I was just excited to travel and visit this new place. You have to fly into Tel Aviv to get there because you can’t fly into the West Bank. Then you have to take a series of buses and cross checkpoints to get into the West Bank. In Tel Aviv you see this beautiful city that’s well kept, high class, and clean. Then you get taken over into the West Bank and it’s completely different. It is kept completely separate, you can’t just walk or drive over the border, it’s a headache. I was confused by that, I didn’t understand why that was the case.
We would go skating and every Palestinian we came across was so excited that you were there, so excited that you came to visit Palestine because it wasn’t the norm. We were skating one spot and it’s a good example of the kindness we experienced. The people we met were excited to practice their English and I remember this guy watching Ryan try this trick on a manual pad. He was there with his son and they both had the biggest smiles on their faces and were so fascinated. They were talking to me using broken English and they asked me what Ryan’s name was. It was around 9pm and they were just out watching us. Then they both started chanting “Ryan Lay! Ryan Lay!” It was so awesome, they were so stoked when he landed his trick. They told us to wait for them and they went away and came back with a huge box full of fruits and vegetables that they wanted to give to us. It was an amazing interaction. Then we ended up continuing down the street and we could hear distant gunfire. It got a a little scary and it was sketchy but it felt far enough away. We weren’t too concerned. Then we went down the street, turned the corner and it was chaos.
“I snapped this photo of Ryan walking over the fire and in the background you can see the smoke of the tear gas, and a family trying to live their normal lives while being tormented by this army”
There was fire in the street, and smoke in the distance. I soon realised that was tear gas. When you breathe it in it feels like there are spikes in your throat. It becomes hard to breathe and you can taste it. I got short of breath and that was just from being downwind of it. There were families just walking along the sidewalk minding their business. People just living their lives while this is going on. Looking ahead there were IDF Israeli trucks driving through the town, and kids throwing rocks at the trucks. Something had just happened, stuff was on fire in the streets and people looked baffled, this was right by a refugee camp too. I asked our friend Aram what was going on and he explained The Israeli army would just come in and intimidate people regularly, it was just a thing that happens. I snapped this photo of Ryan walking over the fire and in the background you can see the smoke of the tear gas, and a family trying to live their normal lives while being tormented by this army. It was a completely sobering experience because as the days went by there were little things I would notice. I asked my friend Aram if there were spots in Tel Aviv and he just told me he couldn’t go there, as a Palestinian these limitations were put upon him. It started to sink in. We went to the Dead Sea one day and the beach is controlled by Israel. From the West Bank you have to go through an Israeli checkpoint to get to the water over there. He didn’t tell us until we got there having driven about an hour to a spot in Jericho. We wanted to jump in the water afterward but Aram said he would just wait in the car. It blew my mind that my Palestinian friend was treated like less than a person. As an American we could go straight through and no-one bothered us the entire time we were there.
One time I was at in the apartment on my computer and the power just went out. Aram told us it was just a rolling blackout, it’s something they just do regularly, an intimidation technique to remind you that they’re in control of the power and everything. It blew me away. Driving to Jericho we saw the Israeli settlements and it was essentially like driving past a gated neighbourhood in the States, a closed off area with men guarding it with guns. If you’re Palestinian and on that road you’re liable to be shot on land they have just claimed. It seemed so complicated before I got there and then I understood that they are literally just occupying the country because they don’t regard Palestinians as people. It’s an experience I’ll never forget and this photo is a sobering take away from it.
Ryan Sheckler – Equestrian visitation
We were shooting something for the last shoe Ryan [Sheckler] had on Etnies before he stopped riding for the company. It’s the last project we worked on together. I went to his house to shoot the photos and we went walking out to this equestrian area in his neighbourhood with a bunch of horses running around. I suggested we get some nice photos of him and the horse, he went up to the horse and it just started making the funniest faces at him. I like the way the photo makes it look like Ryan is saying ‘what are you doing?” and the horse is making this insane face, haha. It makes me think of the first time I ever went on a trip with him. We were in Atlanta and we were skating a spot. What’s funny is that he had such a different upbringing to most people, he grew up in the limelight as a child star. Some social situations he didn’t have to navigate while being exposed to others. We were at this spot and he had finished skating, everyone was stood around the van wondering where to go next and I think he was smoking a spliff or something. He had his shirt off, he’s all tattooed and he’s standing up against the van. It was sunset and he looked all epic so I shot a photo, it was almost like he wanted me to take a photo, it was asking for it.
So I shot the photo and it looked really cool, it was a beautiful photo and the light was hitting him in such a cool way. He walked up to me and said “did you just take a photo of me? That’s not allowed!” He made me show him the camera and said I had to delete it he said he can’t have that and that it’s not allowed. I think maybe he didn’t want people to see that he was smoking? He was so upset and nervous about it like I was out to get him or going to sell the photo to TMZ or something like that. So I deleted the photo and we got in the van. I was sitting behind him, it was awkward, and it was silent in the van. He was muttering that “it’s ridiculous, this is not allowed”. We were on a trip together for the next ten days so I needed to make it right, we needed to bury the hatchet. I pulled him to the side and explained that I was on his side, that I’m here shooting for Etnies and didn’t want to do anything to disparage his image. We’re cool now, and we have skated so much together since then so it’s fine. But what’s going on when I look at this photo is that I’m thinking I want to show you that original photo which I no longer have but this is the one I’ve got instead, haha.
Sarah Meurle – Wallride
The fun thing about working for the Sole Tech or now Nidecker brands and also shooting freelance stuff for Thrasher is that you get this insane contrast of people that you get to spend time skating with. People from totally different worlds. Sarah [Meurle] is one of my favourite skaters, she’s just so sick. All of the WKND stuff she puts out, her part in the WKND video is just one of my favourites, she is just awesome. This photo is also one of my all time favourite photos that I have taken. This was a spot that she happened upon while we were out skating. We were looking at another spot right by here when she realised you could prop up the electrical cover with a board. She put her wheels up to the fence and it was fully wallride-able with tighter holes, big enough to put your fingers through the holes but small enough that normal wheels can ride over them. I thought about shooting from the other side of the fence but the holes were so tight that they obscured her and I couldn’t see her properly.
“If you shoot fisheye straight up when someone is doing a wallride it’s really interesting because you’re seeing something you don’t naturally see”
I wanted to do something that was different that showed the fence and what she’s riding on. I realised that in the ground beneath the fence there was a space before it turned into concrete that was just dirt. I had already checked what it looked like fisheye from down at the bottom as low as I could be but found if I got more underneath I would see the trick better. So I started digging a hole underneath the fence, I got the hole big enough that I was perfectly safe under there and needn’t worry about the board hitting me. I was protected by the fence so I just stuck my fisheye perfectly under the bottom of it. It was cool because the angle shows the lines going down the chain links. There are all of these crazy leading lines and patterns. It shows what she’s riding on but you can see her clearly too without obscuring it all from the other side of the fence. If you shoot fisheye straight up when someone is doing a wallride it’s really interesting because you’re seeing something you don’t naturally see, you’re seeing what’s behind you and in front of you in a way. You rarely get a situation where you get to shoot a photo like that. It worked out perfectly with the way her wallride was working too. I love that if you look at her wheels you can see the texture of what she’s riding on, I love being able to show that in a photo. If Sarah is in town I always try to get one photo or more because she is one of my favourite people to shoot.
Erick Winkowski – Lunch Break
I have so many photos of Erick [Winkowski] chilling in weird spots on trips. I’ll always wonder on trips “where’s Erick” then look up and he’s going to be smoking weed in the rafters or something. He is such a lurker, it’s great. This was taken on the same big Emerica trip where we drove through Canada. We came upon what was the biggest truck in the Northern Hemisphere, it was in Sparwood in BC where I’m actually not so far away from right now. We stopped for gas somewhere and someone mentioned that it was the biggest truck in the Northern Hemisphere. Spanky [Kevin Long] was climbing on it and I shot some photos of him. Then I turn around and Winkowski, who had found a Subway nearby, was sitting perfectly inside the wheel eating his sub. He just happened to be there, it was the funniest thing to me. The photo embodies him, he’s wearing sunglasses and chilling in a really funny place. It’s so funny where you can end up on a road trip, especially where we were in Canada. There’s nothing for miles then you’re in Sparwood next to one of the largest trucks in the world. One of those things where you could only end up there if you were passing through.
We want to thank Kyle for his time and for the incredible selection of photos he pulled out for us. Thanks also to Kevin Parrott for helping to line this up.
Follow Kyle Seidler on Instagram for regular updates and while you’re there keep an eye on Etnies, éS, and Emerica to see more of his work.
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