The photo industry is quite blurry right now, after the 2000’s , digital camera totally killed the films ones, who was used since decades before that.
Its seems the youngsters from today, who where born in a digital era, are more and more interested about the old fashion films techniques, which it please me a lot.
Some of the big name in the industry understood that, and went on the market with digital camera with old film camera design. I’m not sure if it’s gonna working,
But if we keep guys like Josh Hotz in this world, our future is safe, believe me!
The Portrait had been shot by myself, and the rest of the pictures by Josh with his lovely Hasselblad camera
Ok, Josh can you introduce yourself, and give us your skate/photo background?
Hey, I’m Josh Hotz from Ottawa, Ontario. I’ve been taking pictures since I was a little dude, before I found skateboarding. It was only natural that I merged my addiction for photography with skateboarding when I discovered it. I always had my hands in the two ponds, and started focusing on the photography when I realized how bad I was at skating, and how easily I kept getting hurt [laughs].
How did you get introduced into photography?
I think my family had a pretty big influence in the beginning. My dad studied it in University, and was shooting photos of the family and stuff since I was born. Either him or my Aunt bought me a big green kid edition Polaroid camera for my first camera, I must have been 10 years old. I’d just take it everywhere – shooting photos of my friends playing in the streets, or my family on vacations and stuff like that.
Skateboarding wise, like most peoples stories, I had like 3 dudes on my street skating growing up. All older than me, so naturally looked up to them which inspired me to keep skating. I’d build some pretty ridiculous ramps with my dad, and they’s always want to skate…I must have been like 12 years old, but i had a camera and thats pretty much when i started shooting some terrible skate photos [laughs]
Luis Tolentino – frontside 180
That’s definitely what i would do with my kids, give them a camera or a skateboard and just let them have fun, it’s the best way for falling in love and keep that passion all your life.When did you decide to go to a photography school? did you feel that you needed it, even if there is no school to learn how to shoot skate photos?
I screwed up timing my applications after high-chool, So I had to take a year off. I think I got into Business Management but I wasn’t really feeling it so I turned down the offer. I just worked a dumb job, and shot skating whenever I could. Turned out it wasn’t so bad, i had a lot of fun skating and shooting that summer so i figured i enjoyed it enough to keep pursing it. Not going to school after high-school can be kind of sketchy for some people, so I figured putting myself in a creative environment with some really knowledgeable people would just push me further in photography.
I wasn’t super interested in other genre of photography besides skateboarding. I did the school work, but shooting skating was still the priority. I tried to get the teachers to understand what skating was about, how it worked. They definitely got an understanding of the culture, but the actual skateboarding part was slightly harder for them to grasp.
Means you were showing your skate picture to your teachers? did they figured out how it can be sketchy to jump over fences, or having 1 or 2 try before run away of the security guard?
Yeah, totally. It’s pretty hard to explain skateboarding through words to people who don’t skate. As soon as i told them it was pretty much fully illegal, it seemed like they gained a new respect for this « underground arts culture » if you will. It was a pretty rad school, the whole idea was to run with each of the students visions and interests and just focus on them individually.
And i guess 99% of the students shooting digital all time, so i guess they are happy to see you using films and loving it.
First year was strictly medium format to large format, black and white. We did everything by hand – developing, printing. In 2nd year we could shoot color, and digital if we wanted to. But everyone pretty much learned you can’t really beat film..especially on a student budget.
That’s great i know photo’s students in europe who know the basis of the darkroom, but never touch a film camera in their whole 3years of school, and just using their own camera, which was just digital. I think it’s wonderful to still have some school like with passionate teachers!
Yeah, they were super into traditional methods and alternative processes. The whole idea was to create your own distinguishable style to separate yourself in the over saturated world of digital photography.
And that’s gonna lead to my next question, why keep shooting with films in this digital era? It is more expensive, you can’t see what you’ve done on your lcd screen, you have to wait a few days before seeing it developed, most of the time you have to lost 30min to get rid of the dust with photoshop , why keeping it complicated?
A couple of years ago, it would have been super easy for me to answer this. I always visualized things in a square format, when I thought of how one of my photos would look it was a square in my head. I was really into symetry and balance, so the square just made sense. The big format just creates a better image in terms of tonality, depth of field and resolution which to me are important factors. Shooting film also requires a much finer attention to detail, so you know what’s going on, and why things are turning out the way they are. With digital you can just mess around until things look right, and not necesarilly know what you did to get there.
It’s definitely annoying cleaning the dust, and spending more time in post.. but in the end I think the photos stand out against the others.
totally agree! just about the beloved skateboarders fisheye lens, it never makes sense to me to put a “circular” picture into a rectangular frame, which make sense with a square fish into a 6X6 square frame.I have noticed you are shooting a lot of 6X6 with your hasselblad, and shooting mostly digital when it turns to 35mm, don’t you like to shoot 35mm films too?
I just dont really see a point in shooting 35mm. The digital cameras these days are as good, if not better than what 35mm gives you. The way I see it, its a whole lot of work for nothing and I’m not one to be shooting 35mm lifestyle snapshots just to get that “film” look. Heck, I don’t even shoot MF the get that “film” look I shoot it cause it gives you a better picture.
Sam Lind – Back Lip
What is you favourite film stock?
Provia 100F
Portra 400 when I shoot neg for portraits.
Do you think shooting skateboarding helps you to be a better photographer in other discipline?
Absolutely. Shooting skating is hectic as fuck. You gotta get to a spot, visualize what the tricks gonna look like, find an angle, and set up all your lights before he lands it. Skaters don’t like to wait.
Shooting skating has given me experience to deal with variable conditions at a location, being able to react and troubleshoot quickly. And not really care what I have to do to get a shot.
Will Marshall – Crook pop over
True! skaters are like highly busy business men, it has to be quick, they want to back to their things quickly ahah
Haha yeah, you definitely don’t have time to mess around. I always try to set up as quickly as possible, that way if something needs to be changed I’m not messing up their focus.
What is your proudest moment as a photographer ?
Damn. Tough one.
Let me think about that.
You know what, it was probably the huge book I made for the graduating exhibition for school. It was like 100-pages of skate photos and portraits of all my friends that I had been shooting for the last 4 years. I got some super intense personal life stories from some of them about their upbringing, why and how they found skateboarding, the reasons they do it etc. I had a friend write a fore-word explaining skateboarding, the industry and stuff like that so non-skaters could get a grip. My whole goal is/was to get the general public who usually hold negative stereotypes to skaters to open their minds and see skateboarding for the amazing expressive art it really is.
In a nutshell…
Austin Fyfe – Kickflip
I could relate to that, photography is really a personal thing in many ways, even when you have to shoot for a gig, it’s a part of your life you are sharing with the world.
Just seeing the looks on all their faces when they saw the final product, the reason I was sticking my camera in their faces so much, really hit home with me. I have an amazing opportunity to capture some of their happiest moments, and I think I showed them how much they all mean to me when I came out with that one-of book.
Where do you get your inspiration?
That’s hard to say. I’m not really the kind of photographer who likes to look at other photographers work. I kind of just take what’s in front of me and interpret it in my own way.
You are an insta-photographer! [laughs]
[laughs]I guess so, the most I “study” is just flipping through skate mags and picking out things about photos that I like, and things I dont like and try to build my photos from that.
What is your top 5 photographers?
Hmm. Give me a few minutes on that one.
Oliver Barton, Hendrik Herzmann, Anthony Acosta, Gregory Crewdson
Theres some kid from england or something like that I remember seeing. He kills it, shoots digital but super creative angles and stuff. There’s so many people out there doing really good work a top 5 is hard to do. Especially since I don’t really study other peoples photos too much.
That might kind of work out in a cool way though, cause when I come across something I really like-it’s in my head forever.
Brian Gaberman is rad too. Allen Ying, I could keep going [laughs]
Barton and Herzmann are the top notch 6X6 shooters, that explain why now! [laughs]
Who would you like to shoot?
I dunno, I think it would be rad to shoot with Arto Saari. He’s a hella multi-talented dude and probably has a lot to say.
It’s alway a little bit of stress to shoot other photographers, when you do something wrong you can’t fake you know what you are doing [laughs]
What are your plans for 2014?
Just try and shoot with as many different people as possible. Travel a lot, and link up with some connections I made last year. No more waiting on other people to do the things I want to do, its time to go out and get it.
Gotta get to Cali at some point… thats where its at.
Mitch Barrette – Backside 180 to switch frontside crooked
Word! any shouts out?
Gotta shout out the Mystks crew, Top of the World, Jay Bridges and Briand Garson for passing down all the knowledge and inspiring me to shoot film, the parents for all the support of course, everyone at Antique Skateshop and everyone that has ever been in front of my lens.
For more about about Josh, you can reach to his work on: