Portfolio images revisited: Skating gone bad

Skating gone bad

My girlfriend and I went to Barcelona for a weekend in september 2009 to celebrate my birthday. The day this image was shot was the national day of Catalonian, so pretty much everything was closed. Most of the natives seemed to had escaped the city, leaving it to the tourists in clusters around the urban hot spots. But if you moved away from those, Barcelona was pretty low of residents.

While walking the streets in Garcia, I noticed two boys skating further up the alley, but they were to far away for my 35mm and the light was very harsh. At the other end of the alley, a group of people had some kind of barbecue with an open fire, so we turned our attention that way. Snap. Snap.

We lost interest and turned around to walk up the alley when we discovered that the skaters was closer than before. One of them was very close, right in front of me, moving quickly towards the barbecue gathering. He had his hand pressed against his back and didn´t look happy. I raised the camera to eye level, twisted the focus ring on instinct and quickly shot two images. (Missed focus with an inch, but who cares). At that point I didn´t noticed the boy in the background – it wasn´t until afterwards I saw the boy, the two skateboards and could put the pieces of information together. Skating gone bad. Outch.

I think I got a bit lucky with this one in that I framed the crying boy to the left, giving room for the friend in the back even though I didn´t noticed him while shooting. Or maybe my spider sense did – I don´t know. Anyway. Without the friend in the back this image would be a photo of a crying boy. Instead – it is a full story told in a split-second.