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Join FramelinesJune 2026
#37 Behind Glass
Latest Issue
Issue 10 — Sheron Rupp, Alex Webb, Billy Dinh
Framelines membership
Join the conversation.
Members shoot monthly assignments, share work, and feature in the magazine.
Join FramelinesLatest Issue
Issue 10 — Sheron Rupp, Alex Webb, Billy Dinh
Past self
Just rewatching the Matt Stuart vid, and came to the realisation that alot of the uk photographers I follow are all from quite alternative backgrounds growing up: Skateboarding/bmxing Alternative music Subcultures Just wondering if anyone fancies sharing what their background is growing up/where they are still at outside of photography. I spent my teens through the 2000s skateboarding. metal music around 2000 turning into the whole scene and death core type culture in 04-06, and ive never really shaken any of that off all these years later. Happy to say my 3 kids are now following in my footsteps and im taking my oldest to see system of a down at Tottenham in July for his 18th.
Cool. Wake up was the first song that I learned to play on the drums and am taking my son to the offspring in a few weeks at c palace
I came up in the rave scene and DJ'd for over 15 years before moving on from the party life. Photography has definitely filled that gap for me since I stopped DJing
I spent my youth as a dancer trying to get on Broadway. Then discovered great food working in various NY restaurants and went to culinary school. After that, motherhood, which led me to my truest love (after my boys ofc) photography!
I wonder how a dance background influences street photography? A bit like skating, where it's physical, and there's a lot of failure to get to success.
Fire! Can you see that influence in your photography?
Ooh this is a great question.
I was as a ‘webmaster’ for a gaming website when I was in my late teens, then a pro gaming company called CPL, who ran the first major gaming tournament (1 million dollar quake 3 tournament in Dallas, Texas- sponsored by MTV)
I used to be a massive gamer spending hours in Warcraft, etc. These days I usually wait for a big fromsoft release, drop 100 hours to it, and get back to normal life.
You’re dead right about there being a lot of skaters, but I was def a nerd 😅
That’s awesome. I was heavily into esports in the early days and CPL was always the pinnacle! I remember watching that 1 million dollar MTV final between Fatality and Vo0 though I’m not sure if it was Painkiller or Quake.
Omg painkiller. I forgot about that game. I just found the CPL wikipedia page and there's a lot of scandal in there. I wonder who wrote it. 😂
I totally missed the surname for a long time before I realised my niece’s other half is Peter Molyneux's (Bullfrog/Lionhead/Fable) son!
This thread brings me great comfort. With two teenage boys now heading off to college, I worried about what they would do with their gaming skills and now realize they will be just fine. ;-)
Totally can relate, i still compete on multiplayer FPS games nowadays (mainly The Finals) but I'm finding my brain elasticity not as good as it once. COOP and RPGs have been a good detour.
I was a teen through the late 80's, mostly 90's and so so so into downhill mountain biking and building my own bikes. Used to work in a bike shop who had a little team who'd race. Then shortcut through a few decades of being a developer. Now it feels like photography is what keeps me grounded and gives me a reason to get out the house (work long hours from home). P.s. very jealous of your SOAD tickets right now.
I feel like so many street photographers seem to have grown up skateboarding so there’s definitely a major link in there.
It sounds like I was a bit like Shane and dove into competitive gaming in my youth before cameras. Mainly Counter-Strike 1.6 but some Quake and Unreal Tournament. 1-on-1 death match games require so many thinking skills all at once that there must be some similarities to being able to quickly spot things on the street.
After that I got really into Texas Hold’em, frequenting many London poker clubs and pubs and reading all the strategy books I could get hold of.
It amuses me how advanced modern day esports and poker has become, I definitely couldn’t keep up anymore even if I had the time to practice. All I play nowadays is one game of Hell Let Loose every Sunday and get frustrated down the microphone to the point where my girlfriend asks “Do you actually enjoy that game?”.
Oh my god that last sentence hits home!
It's all character building 😂
Damn i didn't know you were big into poker, more to discuss on the next meetup hah. I was really into it about 13 years ago, mainly live but i ended up stopping after solvers came into the scene (probably for the best). Totally agree that poker has so many lessons that apply across life. The biggest for me not to be results oriented.
Yes, I think it taught me a lot in my early twenties and gave me confidence that I could master other things if I put the time in.
TBH, I never liked online poker at all, I only played it to keep my brain working on the days when the pubs were shut. All those screen assistants and multi-tabling were too much for me. I just needed to see someones eyes and watch "High Stakes Poker" or read "Harrington on Hold'em" for tips. The equivalent of looking through photo books and watching YouTube now I suppose.
There's a lot of skate/street photo crossover for sure. I grew up stakeboarding in early 90s.
Oh and I played a lot of Doom/Quake/Unreal Tournament/Half Life on LAN parties.
Looks like there are two major trends in here, people that used to skate and people that used to game. I am most defo in the second category. Still am! One of the first games I got on my PC was wolfenstein 3d back in the day
I spend my whole teen years on a skateboard.
I think skateboarding was a really aesthetic heavy culture.
There was magazines, board designs, clothes, movies and so on.
so maybe it´s quite logical that a lot of people with a sense of aesthetic are coming out of this scene.
then they can trial and error their street shots in the same way the trialed and errored their switch treflips haha.
I think its also a bit of the flipside, people that are naturally creative tended towards skateboarding and music, photography just being the next step on.
Cool question! I’ve been playing music all my life and still play bass (electric and upright) in an Americana band. Which is always a dillema, play music or go out shooting in the spare time next to family and work. Gaming was also a big thing (fifa, dota 2, quake) but i sold my PlayStation and dont have a gaming PC anymore because it became a little too time consuming 😂
About the same Darren. But I hit mid teens around 1990 🤣
You old🤣
Maybe..... 👀
I was (am) into post-punk music, and gaming (which I am still, when I have time here and there, tho it’s still a big part of my job!)
Post-punk all day every day!
The connection to skateboarding makes sense to me. As Karlo noted, it's an "aesthetic heavy culture." Skateboarders are already using cameras to document what they're up to. Like street photography, skateboarding is 99.9% failure, even for people who are pretty good at it. And perhaps most important, they're constantly pissing everyone off just by doing what they love.
When people shout and look down on them, they've developed a thick skin and bit of a punk attitude. "I'm gonna do my thing, have fun, and look good doing it, even if you don't like it." That's very helpful in street photography. ;-)
that describes it perfectly!
also every fromesoftware game, like @heroesforsale mentioned is 99.9% failure haha.
I’ve clocked every fromsoft game, and have 100% achievements on a few like bloodborne. Once I get hooked on something I go deep 😅
bloodborne is just a masterpiece! waiting for the remake, or at least 60 fps would be sick!
I grew up on Ozzy and flight simulators. Not much has changed tbh.
Oh really? I’m a big Osbourne fan. Saw him perform with Sabbath, held onto tickets for five years to see him solo but it wasn’t meant to be. His books are great too, could have been a comedian if he wasn’t a singer. One of a kind.
Ozzy was a gateway to all kinds of good music. I also saw him live a while back, proper madlad.
Tried to get into skating (and surfing) as a teenager, but I was far too uncool for that. Been going to gigs ever since I can remember and have been in bands on and off through my twenties and thirties (currently in 2) so I’ve always been around alt cultures and artist spaces. Can’t really remember how I got into photography but I went through a big phase of having toy cameras and Polaroids with me when I went to parties and so it must have grown from that. I’m also into gaming like a few people have mentioned here, but recently have found the camera is a great excuse to get out and go for long walks.
This is an excellent chat btw- thanks @animated.antics for starting it :)
What a fun bedtime read!! I was in my teens mid 80s. Big time party scene in Madrid, being bored on weekends (a very gen-x thing), also skateboarding, going to concerts 5 nights a week... Crazy times. Many of those with my trusty Minolta with which I shot thousands of pictures. Still have all the negatives. Working on making them visible again but terrified of what might come out of there. My kids definitely can't get a hold of those.
Similar one for me, grew up into skateboarding and other extreme sports, always listening to metal music and everything surrounding it, started playing guitar at a very young age and have been playing in bands pretty much my whole life, if you're still into that sort of music you may enjoy my current band, Burner, London based metal. Day job is in the world of classical music.
I wanted to study photography in school but couldn't because of a timetable clash and the barrier of entry being expensive digital cameras, or so I assumed. Ended up coming back to it a couple of years ago through getting into film photography and it's pretty much taken over my life since then, in a good way!
You're absolutely right though, photography and alternative subcultures go hand in hand, no doubt about that ❤️
