
Name,
age, currently residing?
Kyle Bunker, 24, Portland Oregon.
When
and where did you grow up skating?
Started skateboarding '99. Grew up on my dads farm in central Iowa. Standard
"grew up on the farm and skated shitty shit, then moved to Oregon to skate
good shit" story.
Mediums
of choice?
Skateboard, cameras, ect... Any skateboard that's 8 inches wide, and 55mm colored
wheels. Never white or black wheels. Ever. ...and sometimes a Hasselblad 501
cm with 30mm, 80mm, and 150mm lenses.
What
do you like to shoot?
Up until now I've pretty much only shot skateboarding because I thought it wasn't
worth the technical effort to shoot photos of stuff i don't really care/know
much about. But last week I set up a new darkroom in the basement and now I'm
all claiming fine art career. Ha, we'll see how that works out.

How
has skateboarding influenced your art or vis virsa?
When I first started getting into photography skateboarding was pretty much
my only influence. I grew up looking at magazines and like most kids only looked
at the pictures. So the only point of reference that I really had as far as
what constituted a good photo was what I saw in magazines. So I just tried to
emulate how the pros shot their photos. Luckily I was reading Transworld at
the time so I had Atiba to use as inspiration.
What/
who inspires your work?
Do you have a specific creative process. Photographically Atiba will always
be my hero. Generally Fat Mike from NOFX is also on point. He is quite clear
that the key to music is not caring weather or not anyone besides himself at
their shows is having fun. "Punk rock isn't about the kids having fun,
it's about me having fun." Not sure how that relates to photos, but NOFX
is awesome. As for any specific process, the way I normally go about shooting
a photo is one of two ways: I will see a spot that I think would look rad shot
a specific way and plan ahead of time how I want to light it and when I think
it should be shot, then get someone to do a trick that works with what I want
to do. Or If no planning was involved ahead of time I will wait until the person
is ready to do their trick and then and hold everyone up while I look at 2-5
passable compositions and take several light meter readings and shoot a bunch
of Polaroids.

What
are your currently working on?
The new video is full swing, so filming for my new part is all that I have really
been focused on. It's killing me, but this year might be my best part yet. Its
obvious you shoot a lot of skateboarding, but enjoying cameras and shred sleds
myself, i know how hard this can be....
Skate or shoot first? Skate first always. Unless it's specifically a photo mission, which is generally something gnarly that I wouldn't skate anyway.
It
seems like everyone you shred with kills it, did you all grow up together? How
did mall grab come to be?
I grew up in Iowa, everyone else is from around Oregon. Pretty much everyone
from Mall Grab grew up together, then when I moved to Oregon in '06 I met Steven
and Johnny (That Guy) at a park and we became friends and all moved in together.
Mall Grab itself wasn't actually the first video we did. (I say we, but it's
all Stevens work.) The idea behind it was that Oregon winters are dry every
20 days or so, which induces a lot of indoor partying. So Steven got a shitty
dad cam and dubbed it Bail Gun in order to document said good times. He came
up with the idea to have the media guys in the house: Daniel (Boris) and I to
have skate parts and after a while had enough footage of shit to make a crappy
video. Then the following winter we did the same thing with the tag-line: now
presented in standard definition. Which was Mall Grab.

Future
plans/ upcoming events?
In a few months I'm actually moving back to my dads farm in Iowa to
build a DIY park. But not until we finish this years video: Skirdoosh. Look
for the trailer.. whenever Steven makes one. Video is planned to be out last
week of March.
Favorite beer? Funny story about that.. I've never drank a beer before.
Drunken
shred story?
Last April we went Steven and Johnnys hometown to do a premier party showing
type thing at the Medford skatepark. During the day there was a local skate
contest and the video was going to be projected on the deep end of the bowl
after dark. At two separate points during the day Steven and I both took drunken
slams and had to go to the hospital for stitches in our heads. After all the
drama we ended up bagging the showing. Kind of fitting I guess.

Shout
outs?
Uhh, I guess not really a shout out just more of a reminder to Shawn to send
my damn beerics tshirt I bought. I want to wear it in my Skirdoosh part. the
photos that i included havent been seen before (that i can remember) as well
as a photo of me drunk at the mall grab premier. also, here is a link to bail
gun. more people have heard of mallgrab so linking it dosnt seem important,
but i dont think anyone either knows about bail gun, or knew the story behind
it.