Mirek at Hedonskate got us hooked up with photographer Kuba Urbanczyk, and we’re pleased to present the first of a couple international PHOTO JOURNALS we’ve got in the works. Read this for a glimpse of blading in Poland, and to learn a bit about how Kuba got the shot. Stay tuned for more! — ONE

Cracow, at the end of a very, very hot day. We were driving to the last spot of that day (some ledges near Wawel Castle — I’ll try to show them in my next photo journal) when somebody in the car mentioned an old, well-tried spot: a middle-length ledge with a gap, near the cinema. The Ledge itself is really nice but there’s a huge window in close proximity to it — the gap between the ledge and the glass is less than 1 meter so you’d better not fall there…

We were there right before twilight. I could catch a little bit of ambient light and of course use my flashes. It’s the best time of the day to shoot — flashes allow me to build the atmosphere in the picture and the ambient light allows me to show the background just as I love to show it: without too many distracting details. My idea was to show the gap and the illuminated building so I was quite limited with space for me and my flashes, but finally I managed to set them up in a satisfactory way — above me (main light) and the second one on the left (fill in).

After a short warm-up Dave did a perfect backslide — and here you can see the result of our “cooperation.” — Kuba Urbanczyk