Tobin Yelland: 20 Year Issue
Interview by Sam Hetherington.
You can’t do a retrospective magazine without looking back to hallmarkers of an entire culture and in this case, Tobin Yelland. Getting a picture in a skate magazine is often a mark of success and pride, equal parts for the skater as it is the photographer and Tobin has been doing that since he was fifteen.
Having burst into the game when skating was neither cool nor significant, Tobin’s panache for capturing skaters in some of their most iconic moments as well as the unscripted ones solidified him as one of the most respected and important skate photographers we know. A soft spoken talent who just liked skating and decided to build a life around it.
Okay, so the first question is, what were you doing in 2003?
In 2003, I lived in New York City. Specifically that year, I started dating a woman named Vanessa and we later got married.
Lovely. Where are you now?
I live in Los Angeles, California, and I've been here for thirteen years. We have two kids now.
What is it about skating that originally drew you to it?
The kids that I ended up talking to and meeting at school all skated. I had some checkered slip-on vans and we connected over vans because they use vans for skating. Then I got a skateboard just to roll. That's still my favorite part, just rolling fast. I've always lived in cities, so being in a city and weaving in and out of cars and kind of like being quicker than the environment around me was always really fun. Skating always made going somewhere a lot more enjoyable than just sitting on a bus.
How old were you when you had your first photograph published in a magazine?
I was fifteen. It had my friend's name on it, not even my name. But I got paid a very small amount of money, but it was really fun to have that. And then I got another photo published when I was sixteen and I got paid $100. So that really sealed my fate. I knew that I was gonna be a photographer after that.
Were there other 1fifteen5 year olds getting their photographs published?
Yeah my friend Luke Ogden, who was my best friend and we had taken the first photography class together. We pretty much came up together. He may have gotten a picture published before me, I don't know, but we were just doing it together. Back then though skateboarding was pretty small. It was not popular. We didn't see a lot of skateboarders around but it was exciting.
With not a lot of people skating, was there ever a period where you didn’t know if you could make it work financially being a full-time photographer? That's a pretty hard gig to crack into, right?
Oh, of course. I only started to become professional when I was twenty. In 1990. Before that I had odd jobs. I was an electrician's assistant for a while and I liked that because I could work eight hours doing something that was just manual labor but I was always just thinking about photographing and getting out after work and photographing. My mom gave me a plane ticket to New York City as a graduation present after school and linked up with skaters. I got some photographs published from that. That was amazing. What else? We were just eating tons of beans and rice. We went on lots of road trips. Lots of adventures until I was twenty and then it was really just like seven days a week photographing. [1] Being in San Francisco was such a great place. I don't think I could have done it in any other city. I was really fortunate to have started young with me and Luke pushing each other to become better photographers. And we were fortunate too, being in an industry that was coming out a lull and at the same time working really hard. When things start rolling, you start getting more and more opportunities. Coming into the early 90’s, skateboarding started getting really, really popular in San Francisco. So we were in the right place without many other photographers.
From seeing your first print, was that the thing for you to be like, yep this is what I want to keep doing forever?
Yeah that was definitely the first thing. I was not motivated enough to go to college. I just wanted to be a photographer. I'm really glad I didn't get into caring too much about the technical aspects of photography and being graded on it. Getting a few photos published was it for me. My mother and father are both artists and they were huge influences on me to be creative and they encouraged me a lot.
You talk about being at the right place, right time and working really hard. Do you think that being in a position where you were friends with everyone played a key role in you becoming a successful photographer?
It was really everything. When I think back to the late 80’s, when me and Luke were photographing, we were the young kids. The older echelon of photographers liked to mess with us and give us a hard time but it created this atmosphere of motivating us to do better because if I don't, I'm gonna end up being in a job I don't wanna do. So I better do this seven days a week. I better get really good at this fast. [2] But being friends with the skaters was really it.
Has the technology changed that much for you as a photographer or at least the equipment you've used?
When I started, I had single lens reflex cameras. They were really simple. If the batteries died, I could still shoot and guess the combination of numbers. Now I shoot with mirrorless cameras. They're so damn good. They track focus. They are insane. The technology is just amazing.
I can track a focus point on a face, and that face can travel through a crowd of people, and it's just always in focus, and I could shoot twenty frames a second if I want to. If I was trying to do that when I was nineteen years old or wenty, and just focusing is all manual. If it was a skateboarder, I'd have to manually change the focus of them coming towards me. If it started to get darker, I'd have to push it a stop or two stops and then I'd have to go home and physically process it and then hang the film up until it dries and hang the prints up.
What do you think finding the perfect moment to take a photo comes down to?
It's almost like fishing. Fishing for the moment and always ensuring I have my camera. I mean, there's different scenarios where I would know that I'd want this camera with a longer lens, or I'd want a more wide-angle lens, and this is what I want to capture. I can see it kind of in my head before capturing it.
I guess the thing that separates amazing photographers is that ability to make someone feel comfortable and capture candid moments.
I think great photographs are about trust. It's kind of like a friendship. I know for skateboarding, for that kind of action thing, it's about trust and that you're not gonna mess up the photo, because if someone's trying to do something that they just wanna do once, they wanna know that you're gonna get it, and that's about trust. Sometimes it's about sneakiness. I think there's different ways to get photographs. It's also about taking chances.
Also people react differently when cameras are around. For example my father wears glasses and if I initiate a photograph with him he’ll take off his glasses and his hat and he'll change everything and then it won't be the photograph that I wanted to take. The moment's gone. Moments don't last that long. That's another thing. I think good photographers know a moment will only last for split seconds. And so in that way, it's kind of like fishing - just waiting and waiting.
I love the analogy of going fishing. Obviously you've been taking photos for a very long time. If you could give your 2003 self some advice, what would it be?
If I could give my 2003 self some advice, I would say don't worry so much, be happy. Just try to be happy with all the simple things. It's funny thinking back to give advice.
When you do look back, did you ever realize you were photographing a very iconic time in skating? Did you ever have moments of being like yeah this will be big?
When I was starting I was going out to work and get photographs to sell to skateboard magazines. As far as the skateboard action shots there were important moments. Maybe when the skaters did something for the first time. I photographed John Cardiel Backside 180 Ollie over the Gonz gap. He did it and rolled away and ended up being like a really tiny little quarter page advertisement. But that was a really important moment because it was the first time anybody did have anything over it but an ollie. There's been more moments like that, but I guess just looking back.
Do you have a iconic fuck up story at all?
Oh yes, lots of them.
As far as skateboarding goes, I was photographing Henry Sanchez on a backside nose-blunt slide. At this time it was probably the hardest trick you could do. No one was doing this trick, it was brand new. A backside nose-blunt slides on such a high ledge. I underestimated how many shots I had left on the roll. He made it, rolled away and I didn't get it. It was especially embarrassing because there were three other photographers there at the time. There was Gabe Morford, Luke Ogden, and I think Shelby Woods, too. So I'm sitting there and everyone's just looking at me and I fucked up. I asked him to go again, which he did and I got the shot but he gave me a hard time for it.
Circling back to what you said at the start with skating being unpopular and really small, what are your thoughts on where skating is now?
I like to think of skateboarding as not a sport. I like to think of it as something that is just an expression. That’s always going to be my experience and I don't really like to compare my experience to what it is now. Skating now is just so much bigger. There's so many different people expressing themselves in their own way on skateboards. So actually I'm fine with big arenas, Olympics and things like that. It's not my world but it’s still skating.
What would you like to see in photography or skating or skate photography moving forward?
I look at magazines and people are doing crazier and crazier tricks. There's so many creative people doing skateboarding and photographing skateboarding and making videos of skateboarding. I don't know what I'd like to see.
Is there anything you don't want to see? Maybe that's an easier question.
More skateboarding on film like 16 millimeter film, super eight film. I like it looking kind of grainy and kind of rough around the edges. I'd like to see more of that. Film will be beautiful forever. So space for rougher on the edges kind of looking images because there’s so much polished stuff now.
Yeah, I agree. And this is my last question for you. What is Monster Children to you?
Monster Children to me is landscape, incredible photography, beautiful paper and a really nicely designed big space where the words don't overcome the whole magazine. I don't know, it's kind of understated and smart. You really come away with it feeling that it’s an art book, you know, instead of a magazine. I love the way it's perfectly bound to the people in it and that it's from Australia.
Get your hands on Issue #73, the 20 Year Anniversary Issue, here.
