Bogota Skating On HP5+ Posted On 8th April 2025 To Magazine & Stories

 El Parque Nacional

I met Andrés and his buddies at Bogotá's most iconic park, el Parque Nacional. I was filming a video for my YouTube channel (Through the Glass) about the 800 or so displaced Embera indigenous people who were occupying the park. Andrés and crew were skating the park's entrance steps and sharing their boards with a group of Embera children.

The Proposal

The guys asked me where I was from and we got talking about the analog photography YouTube channel I was launching. I proposed collaborating on a skate-themed video. They immediately called over Andrés, the only one of the group who to that point had seemed more interested in skating the steps than getting to know the foreign photographer. I launched into my pitch: I was making a YouTube channel and the production was going to be pretty good because I had a friend who was a Hollywood video editor and was going to help me. What's more, I was in contact with people at ILFORD Photo, a big film producer, and they might share the photos on their Instagram account that had almost half a million followers—but I couldn’t promise anything.

Andrés listened politely, although he didn't seem to care. When I finally finished talking, he said "de una, bro," Colombian for "for sure, bro."

Juan, Andrés, and Stefy hanging out.

Tercer Milenio

A couple weeks later, I met up with Andrés and his friend Stefy at one of Colombia's biggest skateparks, Tercer Milenio. The park is located in a commercial zone of central Bogotá that's known for petty crime and drugs. In fact, Tercer  Milenio was built like 5 years ago as part of a wider initiative to rid the area of two open air drug markets: El Bronx, and El Cartucho. El Bronx was particularly infamous. Criminal control of the area was such that law enforcement couldn't enter and, supposedly, the drug kingpins kept a leashed crocodile outside their headquarters to intimidate people and dispose of bodies—many Bogotanos have told me this, but I haven’t been able to verify it. The area is much better now. There are no crocodiles and all that remains of Cartucho and El Bronx is a flea market that surrounds the skate park. Some extreme travel YouTuber types have gone there to film and been chased off by vendors.

I got one I liked

I wasn’t feeling in my photo mode when we arrived at the park’s bowl. I’d never shot skateboarding before, let alone on film, and I was distracted by the filming of the YouTube video. I let Andrés set up the first shots, and you’ll notice the background is messy and the light isn’t ideal. Still, I got one I liked. After a while, I started to slow down and really concentrate on how to increase my chances of getting a powerful photo. On the other side of the bowl, I found better light and a much more interesting background.

Andrés’ expression and the way the fisheye captures his movement make up for some of the scene’s problems.

That One Keeper

I regret not taking more photos at this spot. I wish I’d been able to catch Andrés catching air over that mountain. Additionally, I always feel like I need to conserve my frames when shooting film, but I’m starting to think that’s a missguided instinct. Digital or film, if you’re lucky enough to find a special scene, you gotta work it until you get that one keeper.

At The Entrance

After skating Tercer Milenio's bowl, Andrés decided he wanted to skate the same stairs where we’d met, at the entrance to El Parque Nacional. The park was over two miles north but Andrés' friend Brandon had a small electric scooter. The four of us headed off together—Brandon driving, me on the back, Stefy skitching off the scooter’s tail, and Andrés joyfully weaving between traffic and periodically hitching rides with passing vehicles.

Andrés' friends were waiting for us at the park. Before I knew it, they were doing high-speed skitches up and down the park's pedestrian walkway. It kills me that I didn't get a good photo of it.

Like so many shots that day, this could have worked with flash and a slow shutter speed.

Too Ambitious

The scene at the stairs was the same as the day I'd met them. Andrés locked in while the rest gave their boards to the Embera kids and watched/filmed Andrés, hanging on his every attempt. I didn't even try to get the perfect photo: One that shows a talented skateboarder doing cool tricks in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. Too ambitious on a day most of my bandwidth was being eaten up by a YouTube video. The goal was just to get some decent photos for Andrés. Even so, it was still a tricky scene. I felt I needed flash to separate Andrés’ from the background but I doubted my on-camera strobe was strong enough to fight the mid-day sun. I decided to compromise, over exposing the scene a bit and hoping that in black and white the blown out sky wouldn’t look so bad.

Quick Hot Chocolate Break

I was surprised when I got the scans back and saw that the flash seemed more than powerful enough. The photos are decent, but I think they’d look much more dramatic if they’d been exposed darker. After the stairs, and a quick hot chocolate break, we headed up towards Monserrate—the mountain that hangs over Bogotá.

Andrés had me take his photo hanging off a bridge we crossed on the way up.

Photo-perfect

The conditions were photo-perfect once we got to the spot: thick clouds, low-ish light, light rain that might light up with flash. Andrés fell a couple times, though, and decided he couldn't skate in the drizzle. This cleared the way for Juan to come off the bench. Andrés settled into a coaching role.

Juan fell a lot but didn’t complain.

It Was Getting Dark

It was getting very dark by the time we decided to head down the mountain to the last spot. I'd have been giddy for the low light on digital, but I wasn't sure if it would work on ISO 400 film. Andrés, and even Juan, nailed all their tricks one after another. It was by far the best run of the day. I was shooting at an 1/8th of a second, though, and had no idea what to expect of the photos. I got the scans back a few days later, and sure enough they were the best of the day. Skateboarding photography lesson learned: Shoot in low light and drag the shutter.

This is my favorite.

Image - ©Henry Craver