Lomography

Southbank, London
written by spendospend on November 10th, 2009 , 4 comments (6 votes)

Please activate JavaScript to see this gallery.

The South Bank is the area in London on the southern bank of the River Thames near Waterloo station that houses a number of important cultural buildings/institutions. The South Bank stretches 2 square miles (5 square kilometers) along the shores of the River Thames. And was the site that hosted the 1951 Festival of Britain.

South Bank is also regarded by many to be the unofficial home of British street skateboarding. The sheltered section beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall has provided the skateboarding community of Britain and international skaters alike with ideal banks and stairs since the 1970s and has hosted many demos and appeared in most British skate videos, its also conveniently located near other skate spots such as The Hayward which is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre.

As a skateboarder myself it was nice to go there to shoot a location and as my mission on this section of the great Lc-a is about street art it was perfect!

I started weaving in and out of skateboarders, bmx riders and inline skaters for ages trying shoot the graffiti that has been plastered all over ever inch of the sheltered section, I couldn’t really get to the spots I wanted to shoot because I was getting in the way and getting a few people a tad pissed off to say the least, so I just had to keep out of the way and shoot from a distance.

I didn’t stay long because it was torture watching people skate this iconic skate spot knowing my board was at home 94.2 miles away (yes I’m sad for working it out).

So as darkness set in and the skating grinded to a Holt, having left the hot shoe attachment to my ringflash at home it was time for me to leave and head back to Egham where I was staying.