Urban Motion

I don’t know who to feel more sorry for, the traceur missing the jump, or the photographer being used as a matress!

This made me chuckle, it’s posted on ‘High Society Robot’

an excerpt:

Apparently the latets craze seeping the world of “danger junkies” (I hope danger is something they can OD on),and it is called free-running. Or, if you like, parkour. However, if you do like, you are a twat.

Maybe I should qualify something. According to Wikipedia, “Free running is a physical art, in which participants (freerunners) attempt to pass all obstacles in their path in a smooth and fluid way”.

See, this is the proper free-running, like the kind you saw in Casino Royale. This was, I have to admit, friggin’ awesome.

Well I suppose it should come as no surprise that the blog in question has now been taken down, I wish I’d saved the entire post now!

Although parkour is predominantly populated by the young male, there are a few female participants like Hollie. Hopefully with the discipline being so opposed to competitiveness a wider female presence can develop.

And the rest will follow:

I went out shooting a few photos for an hour during my lunch break on Wednesday. I only really got chance to review the photos today (I shot them on digital for a change - but used a CZJ Flektogon manual lens) - this one photo stood out.

I think this shot captures the sheer doggedness needed by anyone wanting to maintain the levels of fitness the disciplines of parkour, tricking, and buildering require. It may not be totally apparent, but Ed is holding on by brute force alone, there are no hand holds on that plain stone column.

So, my eagerly anticipated copy of JPG Mag Issue 13 finally dropped through the door (I guess distributing this thing from the States takes longer than I anticipated). The reason I’ve been so excited about its arrival is that some of my parkour photography got published in it. Yeah ok, so I’m being blatantly self promotional here, but, there are some superb articles and photos in this issue whose overall theme, Gravity Powered, is very close to my heart.

There are articles on: Snowboard Photography, Skateboard Photography, Surf Photography, and much more. Download the PDF version here, and better yet subscribe to the print edition!

In September 2006 I had my first real world experience with Parkour - one that would ultimately place one of my photographs in the Tate Britain gallery.

At the time I was working shifts for a large IT company based in Leeds, England. At the start of one night shift, as I was getting out of my car I spotted something quite unusual to me: a group of kids were clambering over the roof of Leeds International Pool.

…Funnily, legend has it that the Leeds International Pool has never hosted an official international competition, an error during construction resulted in the pool length being too short for regulations - somebody forgot that the tiles use to line the pool would reduce its length….

I had started to carry my camera bag everywhere with me, so I quickly took out my 5D and started to shoot. I soon realised that one of the kids was sizing up the gap for a jump, so made the decision to get enough environment into the composition to show the scale of what was happening. ‘Leeds Leap’ (above) was the best frame from the sequence.

The photograph itself has received mixed opinions from the wider parkour community. Parkour is not about sensationalism, exhibitionism, or taking risks where there is no call for them. Yet this photo exhibits many of these traits. Perhaps these can be attributed to the desire of the kids involved to publicise their passion for the discipline? There are at least 5 cameras being used by the kids within Leeds Leap, and it was my realisation and subsequent internet search for the video they were shooting that lead me toward making contact with the West Yorkshire ParKour group.