Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Kyle Bunker
Should one become entrenched in the photo section of SP, one name that will almost certainly be come across at some point is Kyle Bunker. While his involvement with the site has certainly decreased recently, Bunker remains as one of the influential figures in the photo section of SP. With his combination of technical knowledge, a friendly, alluring personality, and great skill in skate photography, Bunker has helped and influenced an abundance of budding photographers on the site. Despite his celebrity status, Bunker took the time to be interviewed by the Dank/Chill Photography Union.
Kyle Bunker= KB Dank/Chill Photography Union= DC
DC: You are repping Portland, Oregon right?
KB: Correct.
DC: To start off let me ask you, what is photography to you?
KB: It is a mathematical process that meets up with a cool looking picture at the end of it. I’ve always thought of it more in that regard, like people that have the more “community college” outlook on photography, like, I really like the feeling I get when I take photos at night, I like looking at a picture and I get a good feeling from it. I think that’s like the powdery way to fluff yourself into thinking that you don’t suck. And so I’ve always, I don’t know, I think of the process of technical photography in that sense.
DC: Describe this “feeling thing” a little further.
KB: Well in actuality the school I went to was a community college in Iowa, and so there were a whole bunch of kids in the program that were like on the first day you go through the standard questions like, “Who are you?” and “Where are you from?” and “Why are you here” kind of thing… and everyone was like Well I have this Canon Rebel point and shoot that I take Myspace photos with, where I hold my arm out and take pictures of myself and I really like that so… I thought I’d take this professional photography course.
DC: Do you think you have a definite style of photography, how would you describe your body of work?
KB: If I had to describe my style… well it often seems that I only shoot pictures of skating because… like I said I really enjoy the technical aspect of photography like very meticulous lighting and the metering and everything…. Ten times before I actually take the picture and like always fidgeting with little details of stuff and I don’t know I enjoy the technical process of knowing exactly what the pictures going to look like before I take it because I only shoot film and so you know I don’t get to take 100 snapshots with my digital and look at the back of it before I actually take the picture. And so I pretty much only shoot skating because I always felt like it would be a waste of my time to put all this mathematical effort into taking a picture of something that I didn’t even care for like fashion or basketball.
DC: What advice would to give to a lot of these kids on SP… the ones who have the vast technical knowledge but are lacking in terms of composition and the likes, how would you advise them to bridge their technical knowledge with compositional knowledge/elements if you will…
KB: Well for example I usually won’t pay attention to what the person [skater] is doing like trick wise, I’ll just like... you know wander around and find an angle that I think would look good or clean or you know see where the shadows are going to be obstructive you know something like that. I’ll walk around and look for a composition and then once I find a composition that I want to shoot, then I’ll basically be like “Alright…” and ask them to do something like a trick that fits the composition I’m looking for or I’ll, depending of I know what my buddy has in his bag of tricks, I’ll say “You know you should do this right there so I can shoot it this way…” Like that’s what I end up doing in a lot of my photos… I’m not like “Oh wow he’s going to kickflip frontboard this, sweet!” and so I don’t have to work around what trick he’s going to do, I just find whatever photo I want, and then make his trick work for the way I want to shoot it.
DC: Touching back on your interest with the Zone System, how did you develop your interest and knowledge in it, college I assume?
KB: In college, yeah.
DC: Were you interested in it at all prior to this?
KB: No, to be honest, I didn’t know about it until I went to college. All the experience I had photographically prior to college was in high school, and I had a very…. Like incomprehensive photo class at my high school compared to college. So when I went to college it was like… I already had the basics of printing and stuff in the darkroom, but everything else was pretty much… relearning, like I knew how to develop my film and shit like that, but everything else was pretty much relearning like the technical side of how to expose, which was rad and I think probably 90% of the other kids in the program weren’t interested in the mathematical side of it, like I said, they were more instant gratification like I wanna shoot portraits and happy people and have a cool outcome and to their credit they are probably making more money than I do right now by shooting portraits, but that doesn’t really interest me. I was more hyped on relearning the mechanics of photography because everyone else was kind of bored with it.
DC: Its interesting you should bring this up, because as I recall after Pete Halupka went to college, and obviously he’s pretty experienced technically and very well-rounded artistically, he wrote about [via the forum] relearning things like exposure etc.... the basics if you will. And I guess these are things that can easily be messed up and poor habits can be developed if certain things aren’t explained in length enough. So basically you agree going back to the basics can be beneficial to pretty much anyone?
KB: Exactly.
DC: And to all the kids on SP who are aspiring to go to college for photography, at least in your experience, do you think its worth it? Do you think you should go with the whole fuck a BFA get a business degree and learn photo yourself… what is your view on that?
KB: Um… I think it varies by person. Like if you have at your disposal a darkroom and you’re a self-motivated person you can honestly learn everything that I learned in college off of the Internet and through self-exploration. If you have the self-motivation and the physical like darkroom and shit at your disposal… But I mean if that’s not something you think you’re motivated or competent enough to be able to do… like just reading it off the Internet. Like for me I’m not a reader, I can’t read very well, so if I had to learn the Zone System through reading an online tutorial I’d probably pull my hair out. If there is someone capable of doing that, I think you could learn everything I learned in college, and for free.
DC: So would you agree that for most people putting this stuff in to practice is important to really learning and teaching it? Because you know there are those kids on the forum with 3,000 posts “helping” people out with very technical stuff like the Zone System, when in actuality they are just repeating what they read online somewhere six months ago.
KB: I would definitely agree. As I said, I know for me and for probably most people, actual experience is the only way you can truly learn a lot of this stuff.
DC: Lets touch base a little more on Portland. So how long have you lived in Portland?
KB: I moved here in June 2006.
DC: What prompted you to move there?
KB: Skateboarding.
DC: I see. How would describe the move from Iowa to Portland from a photographer’s perspective… Like going to a moderately sized city from a more rural farmland type place, did it alter your photographic eye at all or something along those lines? And if so, in what sense exactly?
KB: Yes actually, you know in Iowa there’s not really tranny…. You know bowls and skate park type shit. And that’s actually what brought me out here like the bowls and stuff. When I got here, I had just graduated college, so I did the whole college thing then moved here…. And I basically relearned how to light photos because shooting tranny with flashes was something I never had a chance to do in Iowa…. And then I had to like relearn how to light because I would end up with all these fucked shadows in the bowls and stuff. So I guess in that way, I completely altered the way I shoot because I had never lit anything like that before... it took a while to figure that shit out.
DC: In general who are your five favorite photographers?
KB: I will say past and present and always my favorite is Atiba. He is always my number one influence… I think its also funny how these days… Like especially in the past couple years his style has gotten kinda weird. And people kinda started to talk shit on him for that and were like Man He’s slipping… And my thing on that is no he’s not slipping at all hes fucking… doing what hes always done… which is… well to understand this we need to take a step backwards. So in like ’98 he was the first guy to start shooting skateboarding with a Hasselblad back when everybody else had like mediocre 35mm slide photos with no flashes… and he started shooting the ‘Blad and started all the crazy off-camera flash shit. I’m sure back then everyone was like: What the fuck is this? This ain’t portrait studios this is skateboarding. And now you know… shooting Hasselblad with 16 flashes is the standard and so now he’s doing the next thing where he’s making it… shooting all his weird digital stuff but just doing what hes doing. And now everyone is kinda like Man he’s slipping, doing all this weird shit and stuff. But you know in five years its gonna be funny when 98% of the kids on SP are gonna be shooting photos that look like the ones Atiba is doing now. Because Atiba isn’t slipping he’s doing what he has always done… which is making something new up and it becomes the new standard… and I think that’s fucking cool.
DC: Other favorite four photographers?
KB: No, not really. But actually this dude Jerry Uelsmann I’ve always been a huge fan of.
DC: Considering I asked you your favorite five photographers and you went into such detail about only Atiba, then would it be fair to say that Atiba really is that important… really that influential on you that he is vastly superior to anyone else you can think of?
KB: Absolutely. To me he is like… the technical genius. And now he’s doing you know his whole new Photoshop thing, and he’s pushing it in new directions which is cool, but in the era when I started shooting photos and being into skateboard photography he was in full swing with the whole Hasselblad, fisheye, and like four, five flashes…
DC: Its funny you should mention Atiba’s effect on the skate photo industry in regards to trends, because this relates to something I really noticed recently. You know about a year ago and a while prior to that the “norm” on SP was the 6x6 format ‘Blads, Bronicas and all that… but then when guys like Pete, Kohlton, and Will Govus started shooting 6x7 more people caught on and now 6x7 has become the new “thing”. Would you say whether it be the professional [photography] industry, or SP that people will just follow the “leaders” per se… and try to recreate the popular styles?
KB: Definitely. Not even necessarily the photo industry, but I guess in that sense that whenever someone tries something new and it turns out looking cool… people will be like, Nice I wanna try that… but that can be said for pretty much anything… that’s the nature for anything ever. For example like an XPan… there’s absolutely no practical use to buy an XPan essentially… but then you know Atiba started goofing around with one five or so years ago and now Jordan Conway owns one.
DC: Do you think its unfair for people [on SP] to scrutinize others for shooting point and shoot and stuff like that?
KB: I think it’s just kinda small-minded of them… I think the people that scrutinize them for like taking a step backwards and simplifying it like that they’re just… you know they have one style or one technique or one… camera or you know one anything that they’ve had, that they’ve made a go at… and then they see someone pushing the bounds like that… whether it be Atiba trying new Photoshop techniques or Pete doing point and shoot stuff after making such a… he made a huge splash on SP you know with his black and white stuff… I actually own three of his black and white prints and they’re on my wall right now. Then he started exploring other areas… like he started shooting color and he did a whole, huge series of just like photos of people standing not posed or anything you know. For a while he focused really heavily on getting good at black and white and he did… and then not to say like he retired from black and white or something I’m sure hes still fuckin’ like able to go out and shoot a damn good black and white photo… But anyway he got really comfortable with it [black and white] and then said Alright I’m stoked on photography not just black and white, I’m stoked on photography. What’s the next thing I can explore? So people were just comfortable with him being super good at black and white so when he started exploring other stuff it was… I think other people had the mindset like, Stick with what you know dude, we’re stoked on your black and white. And he’s like I don’t just want to settle on being good at black and white, I want to be good at photography.
DC: How do you feel about your celebrity status on SP?
KB: Because you used the term first, I’ll acknowledge it I guess. My stance since day one when I signed up was that if I ever got to where people knew who I was and/or I mattered in some degree my whole thing was I don’t care if people think I’m good or if they think I suck or whatever… I’m not gonna give anybody any reason to think that I suck… as in I wasn’t gonna be a dick to anybody ever. Like there have been very few instances maybe even never where I’ve been a dick to anybody on the site… because at least not in you know the humor sense…
DC: Gear?
KB: I’ve got a Hasselblad 501, and a CF fisheye the 30, an 80, a 150. I’ve got four Sunpak 555 flashes… I used to have a digital set up which I sold and bought a drum kit. Then I’ve got a shitty 4x5 that I bought off Craigslist and didn’t use it for many months… and then finally I got it out of the box and shot one photo with it ever… which is that one on my flickr, the one people comment on all the time… that black and white picture that Thrasher photo issue ran. The 4x5 has been sitting in my room ever since then and now I’m trying to sell it on Craigslist.
DC: It looks like your pretty competent with movements and such, where did you learn to use the 4x5 primarily? College? Self taught?
KB: It was a combination of college and also just kind of fucking with it…
DC: Thanks for your time Kyle. Until next time...
KB: For sure!
Find Kyle's photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylebunker/
The Dank/Chill Photography Union would once again like to express its thanks to Kyle Bunker for spending time on the interview.
Kyle Bunker= KB Dank/Chill Photography Union= DC
DC: You are repping Portland, Oregon right?
KB: Correct.
DC: To start off let me ask you, what is photography to you?
KB: It is a mathematical process that meets up with a cool looking picture at the end of it. I’ve always thought of it more in that regard, like people that have the more “community college” outlook on photography, like, I really like the feeling I get when I take photos at night, I like looking at a picture and I get a good feeling from it. I think that’s like the powdery way to fluff yourself into thinking that you don’t suck. And so I’ve always, I don’t know, I think of the process of technical photography in that sense.
DC: Describe this “feeling thing” a little further.
KB: Well in actuality the school I went to was a community college in Iowa, and so there were a whole bunch of kids in the program that were like on the first day you go through the standard questions like, “Who are you?” and “Where are you from?” and “Why are you here” kind of thing… and everyone was like Well I have this Canon Rebel point and shoot that I take Myspace photos with, where I hold my arm out and take pictures of myself and I really like that so… I thought I’d take this professional photography course.
DC: Do you think you have a definite style of photography, how would you describe your body of work?
KB: If I had to describe my style… well it often seems that I only shoot pictures of skating because… like I said I really enjoy the technical aspect of photography like very meticulous lighting and the metering and everything…. Ten times before I actually take the picture and like always fidgeting with little details of stuff and I don’t know I enjoy the technical process of knowing exactly what the pictures going to look like before I take it because I only shoot film and so you know I don’t get to take 100 snapshots with my digital and look at the back of it before I actually take the picture. And so I pretty much only shoot skating because I always felt like it would be a waste of my time to put all this mathematical effort into taking a picture of something that I didn’t even care for like fashion or basketball.
DC: What advice would to give to a lot of these kids on SP… the ones who have the vast technical knowledge but are lacking in terms of composition and the likes, how would you advise them to bridge their technical knowledge with compositional knowledge/elements if you will…
KB: Well for example I usually won’t pay attention to what the person [skater] is doing like trick wise, I’ll just like... you know wander around and find an angle that I think would look good or clean or you know see where the shadows are going to be obstructive you know something like that. I’ll walk around and look for a composition and then once I find a composition that I want to shoot, then I’ll basically be like “Alright…” and ask them to do something like a trick that fits the composition I’m looking for or I’ll, depending of I know what my buddy has in his bag of tricks, I’ll say “You know you should do this right there so I can shoot it this way…” Like that’s what I end up doing in a lot of my photos… I’m not like “Oh wow he’s going to kickflip frontboard this, sweet!” and so I don’t have to work around what trick he’s going to do, I just find whatever photo I want, and then make his trick work for the way I want to shoot it.
DC: Touching back on your interest with the Zone System, how did you develop your interest and knowledge in it, college I assume?
KB: In college, yeah.
DC: Were you interested in it at all prior to this?
KB: No, to be honest, I didn’t know about it until I went to college. All the experience I had photographically prior to college was in high school, and I had a very…. Like incomprehensive photo class at my high school compared to college. So when I went to college it was like… I already had the basics of printing and stuff in the darkroom, but everything else was pretty much… relearning, like I knew how to develop my film and shit like that, but everything else was pretty much relearning like the technical side of how to expose, which was rad and I think probably 90% of the other kids in the program weren’t interested in the mathematical side of it, like I said, they were more instant gratification like I wanna shoot portraits and happy people and have a cool outcome and to their credit they are probably making more money than I do right now by shooting portraits, but that doesn’t really interest me. I was more hyped on relearning the mechanics of photography because everyone else was kind of bored with it.
DC: Its interesting you should bring this up, because as I recall after Pete Halupka went to college, and obviously he’s pretty experienced technically and very well-rounded artistically, he wrote about [via the forum] relearning things like exposure etc.... the basics if you will. And I guess these are things that can easily be messed up and poor habits can be developed if certain things aren’t explained in length enough. So basically you agree going back to the basics can be beneficial to pretty much anyone?
KB: Exactly.
DC: And to all the kids on SP who are aspiring to go to college for photography, at least in your experience, do you think its worth it? Do you think you should go with the whole fuck a BFA get a business degree and learn photo yourself… what is your view on that?
KB: Um… I think it varies by person. Like if you have at your disposal a darkroom and you’re a self-motivated person you can honestly learn everything that I learned in college off of the Internet and through self-exploration. If you have the self-motivation and the physical like darkroom and shit at your disposal… But I mean if that’s not something you think you’re motivated or competent enough to be able to do… like just reading it off the Internet. Like for me I’m not a reader, I can’t read very well, so if I had to learn the Zone System through reading an online tutorial I’d probably pull my hair out. If there is someone capable of doing that, I think you could learn everything I learned in college, and for free.
DC: So would you agree that for most people putting this stuff in to practice is important to really learning and teaching it? Because you know there are those kids on the forum with 3,000 posts “helping” people out with very technical stuff like the Zone System, when in actuality they are just repeating what they read online somewhere six months ago.
KB: I would definitely agree. As I said, I know for me and for probably most people, actual experience is the only way you can truly learn a lot of this stuff.
DC: Lets touch base a little more on Portland. So how long have you lived in Portland?
KB: I moved here in June 2006.
DC: What prompted you to move there?
KB: Skateboarding.
DC: I see. How would describe the move from Iowa to Portland from a photographer’s perspective… Like going to a moderately sized city from a more rural farmland type place, did it alter your photographic eye at all or something along those lines? And if so, in what sense exactly?
KB: Yes actually, you know in Iowa there’s not really tranny…. You know bowls and skate park type shit. And that’s actually what brought me out here like the bowls and stuff. When I got here, I had just graduated college, so I did the whole college thing then moved here…. And I basically relearned how to light photos because shooting tranny with flashes was something I never had a chance to do in Iowa…. And then I had to like relearn how to light because I would end up with all these fucked shadows in the bowls and stuff. So I guess in that way, I completely altered the way I shoot because I had never lit anything like that before... it took a while to figure that shit out.
DC: In general who are your five favorite photographers?
KB: I will say past and present and always my favorite is Atiba. He is always my number one influence… I think its also funny how these days… Like especially in the past couple years his style has gotten kinda weird. And people kinda started to talk shit on him for that and were like Man He’s slipping… And my thing on that is no he’s not slipping at all hes fucking… doing what hes always done… which is… well to understand this we need to take a step backwards. So in like ’98 he was the first guy to start shooting skateboarding with a Hasselblad back when everybody else had like mediocre 35mm slide photos with no flashes… and he started shooting the ‘Blad and started all the crazy off-camera flash shit. I’m sure back then everyone was like: What the fuck is this? This ain’t portrait studios this is skateboarding. And now you know… shooting Hasselblad with 16 flashes is the standard and so now he’s doing the next thing where he’s making it… shooting all his weird digital stuff but just doing what hes doing. And now everyone is kinda like Man he’s slipping, doing all this weird shit and stuff. But you know in five years its gonna be funny when 98% of the kids on SP are gonna be shooting photos that look like the ones Atiba is doing now. Because Atiba isn’t slipping he’s doing what he has always done… which is making something new up and it becomes the new standard… and I think that’s fucking cool.
DC: Other favorite four photographers?
KB: No, not really. But actually this dude Jerry Uelsmann I’ve always been a huge fan of.
DC: Considering I asked you your favorite five photographers and you went into such detail about only Atiba, then would it be fair to say that Atiba really is that important… really that influential on you that he is vastly superior to anyone else you can think of?
KB: Absolutely. To me he is like… the technical genius. And now he’s doing you know his whole new Photoshop thing, and he’s pushing it in new directions which is cool, but in the era when I started shooting photos and being into skateboard photography he was in full swing with the whole Hasselblad, fisheye, and like four, five flashes…
DC: Its funny you should mention Atiba’s effect on the skate photo industry in regards to trends, because this relates to something I really noticed recently. You know about a year ago and a while prior to that the “norm” on SP was the 6x6 format ‘Blads, Bronicas and all that… but then when guys like Pete, Kohlton, and Will Govus started shooting 6x7 more people caught on and now 6x7 has become the new “thing”. Would you say whether it be the professional [photography] industry, or SP that people will just follow the “leaders” per se… and try to recreate the popular styles?
KB: Definitely. Not even necessarily the photo industry, but I guess in that sense that whenever someone tries something new and it turns out looking cool… people will be like, Nice I wanna try that… but that can be said for pretty much anything… that’s the nature for anything ever. For example like an XPan… there’s absolutely no practical use to buy an XPan essentially… but then you know Atiba started goofing around with one five or so years ago and now Jordan Conway owns one.
DC: Do you think its unfair for people [on SP] to scrutinize others for shooting point and shoot and stuff like that?
KB: I think it’s just kinda small-minded of them… I think the people that scrutinize them for like taking a step backwards and simplifying it like that they’re just… you know they have one style or one technique or one… camera or you know one anything that they’ve had, that they’ve made a go at… and then they see someone pushing the bounds like that… whether it be Atiba trying new Photoshop techniques or Pete doing point and shoot stuff after making such a… he made a huge splash on SP you know with his black and white stuff… I actually own three of his black and white prints and they’re on my wall right now. Then he started exploring other areas… like he started shooting color and he did a whole, huge series of just like photos of people standing not posed or anything you know. For a while he focused really heavily on getting good at black and white and he did… and then not to say like he retired from black and white or something I’m sure hes still fuckin’ like able to go out and shoot a damn good black and white photo… But anyway he got really comfortable with it [black and white] and then said Alright I’m stoked on photography not just black and white, I’m stoked on photography. What’s the next thing I can explore? So people were just comfortable with him being super good at black and white so when he started exploring other stuff it was… I think other people had the mindset like, Stick with what you know dude, we’re stoked on your black and white. And he’s like I don’t just want to settle on being good at black and white, I want to be good at photography.
DC: How do you feel about your celebrity status on SP?
KB: Because you used the term first, I’ll acknowledge it I guess. My stance since day one when I signed up was that if I ever got to where people knew who I was and/or I mattered in some degree my whole thing was I don’t care if people think I’m good or if they think I suck or whatever… I’m not gonna give anybody any reason to think that I suck… as in I wasn’t gonna be a dick to anybody ever. Like there have been very few instances maybe even never where I’ve been a dick to anybody on the site… because at least not in you know the humor sense…
DC: Gear?
KB: I’ve got a Hasselblad 501, and a CF fisheye the 30, an 80, a 150. I’ve got four Sunpak 555 flashes… I used to have a digital set up which I sold and bought a drum kit. Then I’ve got a shitty 4x5 that I bought off Craigslist and didn’t use it for many months… and then finally I got it out of the box and shot one photo with it ever… which is that one on my flickr, the one people comment on all the time… that black and white picture that Thrasher photo issue ran. The 4x5 has been sitting in my room ever since then and now I’m trying to sell it on Craigslist.
DC: It looks like your pretty competent with movements and such, where did you learn to use the 4x5 primarily? College? Self taught?
KB: It was a combination of college and also just kind of fucking with it…
DC: Thanks for your time Kyle. Until next time...
KB: For sure!
Find Kyle's photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylebunker/
The Dank/Chill Photography Union would once again like to express its thanks to Kyle Bunker for spending time on the interview.
Welcome to Hai2u's blog. While I certainly enjoy spreading my feelings/messages via Skateperception, I feel this blog will provide me with another medium to share things such as: Opinion pieces, interviews, active discussions regarding current issues in photography etc. If you have any ideas for posts on this blog feel free to contact me (Private messaging on SP is the perferred method). Make sure to check out this page as much as you can, because I will try to keep it active and updated as much as possible. THANKS!
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