As humble as Richie may be, there’s no escaping that he’s shot some of the best quality skateboard images in the UK. Not to say that he hasn’t shot outside of England, cause he has. In fact he’s shot some the biggest names in the business. He gets in the right spot for that great shot and retaining his mellow stance and doesn’t knock any ego’s off the ramp. Oh and he’s good at shooting his second love; music too. Slick Richie

Steal-Life.com - What first got you into photography?
Richie Hopson - Skateboarding is really what got me into photography, Seeing the pictures in skateboard magazines inspired me to start photographing my friends all just for fun.

SL - Did you have any formal education?
RH - I'd consider myself to be pretty much self taught, I did attend a day release course about six years ago, but that really just gave me access to the facilities I needed to learn from my own mistakes.

SL - How long have you been shooting Skate for?
RH - I guess I started about twelve years ago, but that was just shooting my friends for fun like I said. I guess more seriously I’ve been shooting for the last five years.

SL - You shared the ramp with some of the biggest names around, how do you find the pro’s?
RH - It's strange when you attend all the big events where they ship the American celebrity pro's over, you're really quite anonymous, just another bloke on the platform getting in the way trying to stuff your camera lens in their face. The skaters are just there skating and trying to keep themselves to themselves! But on the other hand, I’ve been hanging out on
the platform with most of the top British skaters for several years now and I even used to ride with some of them way back when, so that's just like hanging out with old friends.

SL – You still skate yourself then?
RH - I still ride every week, bowls are really where it's at for me. I can still get an amazing sensation of rolling without even leaving the ground. Perfect!

SL - Do you think it’s important to skate as part of your work or is being a good photographer enough?
RH - I really don't think you need to skate to be able to photograph skateboarding but you do need an understanding of the tricks and their aesthetic and having skateboarded definitely helps with that. Also you'll find that a skater will give a little bit more if they trust you, and I think skateboarding earns a little bit of that trust. Oh and if you're going to shoot street skating it helps to have a skateboard to follow the riders around from spot to spot.

SL - You don’t just shoot skate photography do you; tell us about your music work?
RH - I've not really shot much music stuff lately, the last thing was a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion gig, but I used to shoot a fair bit of music portraiture and live stuff, yes. I used to do a lot of work for a record company called ZTT and they'd send me off to video shoots and stuff to photograph people like 808state and Adamski. That was fun and I got to travel a bit. I’m going to try and shoot more bands.

SL - Does music play a big role in your life?
RH - Music's really my other love after photography and skateboarding. I'm part of a band called Slick Sixty we released singles with Cup of Tea Records about five years ago and an album a couple of years ago on Mute records and we've now started our own label called Super Slick Stereo
Sounds. So far we've put out a run of 7' singles by ourselves and our friends who’ve record under a variety of different names.

SL - What are your thoughts on digital cameras; will they change the way you shoot photographs?
RH - They already are changing the way I do things, certain jobs, clients request digital, it saves a lot of money on film and processing but still has quite different properties to more conventional film.

SL - What’s your dream location to shoot?
RH - Hmm! The Animal Chin Ramp.

http://www.richiehopson.com