The Magic of Skate Media

Is it okay to photograph animals in zoos and animal reserves for a field guide? 

I'm not asking whether it's okay from the perspective of a zoo or reserve. My question is about the animal itself, the photographer, and the photographer's attitude toward the animal and their audience. My question is informed by one of the golden rules of wildlife photography: avoid habitat alteration and baiting animals.

The golden rule came up during a photography field trip for my film school. We were all given cameras with long lenses and asked to photograph animals in a way that revealed as little as possible that they were living in captivity. From the very beginning I wasn't very excited about the assignment because it felt boring and morally questionable to me, as the animals were all living in an altered habitat being fed by their human caretakers.

One of my classmates, who also could not take it seriously, found a playful way around it. Instead of photographing the animals, he photographed the photos displayed next to the enclosures as if they were photos of the actual animals, as these included the natural environment of the animal. The professor loved the first few images. It wasn't until he realized that one of the photos of the display photos had been taken by himself that he realized what was going on. He ironically called it cheating.

This started a heated discussion about morality and the golden rules of nature photography, and who gets to decide where those boundaries are. These ethics and rules seem important because there are wildlife photographers who spend weeks or even months, like my professor, hidden in the field waiting for the perfect shot. The point of this golden rule of nature photography is for the photographer to have no control over the environment. In nature photography, weather changes, there are other animals (including ones that may threaten the photographer’s life), and luck should have the control. By contrast, photographs made in a human-controlled environment should not be presented alongside nature-controlled images without any distinction.

I see a similar issue in skateboarding.

There are hybrid skate spots built specifically for skateboarding but designed to look like real street architecture. Just look at the cover of a recent issue of Free Skateboarding (Issue 66). The existence of hybrid spots is justified, just like animal reserves are justified (and, to a lesser extent, commercial zoos). But they shouldn't replace real street spots. Hybrid spots should exist alongside in our skate media, but their meaning should be distinguished from them, just like media from zoos and animal reserves, as the skaters are in an altered habitat, perhaps even being baited to skate there by the city that planned the spots.

Sometimes a single clip of someone skating one of these hybrid places as if it were a real street spot can kill the magic of a whole skate video. Yet footage from an old skatepark, crusty DIY or a bowl doesn't have the same effect. Why? Because it’s honest: the audience knows it’s not a street clip. The filmer isn't pretending to be in the streets or hiding the fact that they're just in a skatepark or hybrid spot built for skating.

The same applies to animal photography. A photo taken in a controlled reserve, zoo, or carefully designed enclosure has a different meaning from a photo taken in the wild. The problem isn't necessarily where the image was made. The problem begins when the photographer tries to blur the distinction between real and hybrid environments, breaking the golden rule of who or what is in control.

The same thing happens with private skate spaces built to imitate street environments and filmed as if they were real. Steve Berra's infamous purpose-built flatground rails in Skate More (2005) are a good example of this unethical kind of filming, especially when filmed in a city like Los Angeles where there are countless real street spots at his front door. Berra’s use of an artificial environment chose convenience over exploration and authenticity; the definition of a poser move because it was dishonest. 

Photographing and filming skating at real skate spots takes time, effort, patience, and luck: weather changes and other people (including security and police) can get in the way, but this all adds excitement and meaning, much like a wildlife photographer waiting for the magical moment. 

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