Roberto Alegria images have taken skateboard photography to a place where the line between fine art, portraiture and action sports have beautifully dissolved into amazing works of art. Awayn had a pleasure of chatting with Roberto this week!
I started skating when I was 11 years old and photography came 4 years later thanks to my sister as she was doing a photography course. I was just playing with her camera and it come out I was quite good at it.
To be honest at the beginning I was not really mixing these two passions but one day I took a good skate shot and a magazine published it as a cover. It was really inspiring and encouraging to see my first skate publication in a cover, that was the beginning of the skateboard photography era for me and this is also when I started to make a living out of my work.After so many years, you learn how to do it the best as possible. And to be honest, the less accessible the spot is the better image you are gonna end up taking. Its a constant challenge: Look for undiscovered places and do it as fast as possible always producing high quality work.
Probably the country of Oman, I went with the Volcom team and Red Bull in the hottest season of the year (104ºF during the day) you literally can drop an egg in the middle of the street and it will get cooked.
It was the first time that a skate team went to this country. We managed to skate during the night and luckily we produced a lot of footage so we could give ourselves a ‘day off’ (so weird in a skate tour) so we decided to go on an adventure, visit some Wadis (canyons) and sinkholes.
The whole trip was memorable and fun, the culture of Oman and the landscapes are amazing and the people are some of the most friendly in the world.
Probably the country of Oman, I went with the Volcom team and Red Bull in the hottest season of the year (104ºF during the day) you literally can drop an egg in the middle of the street and it will get cooked.
It was the first time that a skate team went to this country. We managed to skate during the night and luckily we produced a lot of footage so we could give ourselves a ‘day off’ (so weird in a skate tour) so we decided to go on an adventure, visit some Wadis (canyons) and sinkholes.
The whole trip was memorable and fun, the culture of Oman and the landscapes are amazing and the people are some of the most friendly in the world.
I have a Canon 1D for sequences and a Hasselblad with a digital back for stills, 3 Elinchrom ranger flashes.
The challenge is that the whole equipment is very heavy and many times I have troubles traveling but it ’s worth it when you see the final work
I think it changed a lot of the perception I have on the world, many years ago before the internet era all the info about countries and so on was limited.
The power of pictures is so strong that just one single image can be the trigger to decide on a trip.
Follow Roberto:
Instagram: @roberto_alegria
facebook: Roberto Alegria photography
www.robertoalegria.com