Submit Skatepark Pictures & Information To The Sideways Guide!

The Sideways Guide is seeking pictures of skateparks that really show the skatepark - a panoramic format - a picture that puts you right there at the park. Please, try to avoid shots such as this example below. While it does show some of the park, it certainly doesn't show the WHOLE park, and showing the WHOLE park is the whole point of this site...

With this example above (Canon City, Colorado's concrete park), you can see that there is some shape of a bowl as well as some ledges and other stuff, but not much else. While a bad picture might be better than no picture at all, it isn't all that hard to take an effective picture of a skatepark. Take the example below, for instance...

Here at Aspen, I took a succession of fotos from left to right with a wide 28mm lens, then assembled them into a "poor-man's panoramic" in Photoshop. With this photo, you know exactly what the park in Aspen looks like. You can do this with even a disposable camera. If you don't have a wide angle lens, position yourself up high and/or far enough away to fit the park into the frame of the picture. If you have even a crappy disposable camera, it's ok. Just remember to get up high on a fence, your car, a ladder, a lamppost, an adjacent hill, bridge, rooftop, or your buddy's shoulders.

1. If submitting photos digitally, use this email address:

submit[at]thesidewaysguide[dot]com

Please submit them in JPEG format at a minimum size of 400 px in height and/or 600px in length (or a combination of those dimensions for panoramics, i.e. a 400px X 1200px panoramic pic) and 300 DPI resolution. Include as many descriptive details of the park as possible, like fees, pads, hours, quality, and any other information you think might be helpful.

2. If you are shooting overview pics of an indoor skatepark, use 800 speed film and NO flash. If you use a flash, usually you get a bright white, washed out shot of the closest ten feet or so, but the rest of your picture is too dark to see anything.

3. Take a succession of fotos for a "poor-man's panoramic" Make sure you overlap enough with the individual shots so there will not be any gaps in the final photo. Don't worry about all the obstacles lingin up perfectly because they never do but it gives the pics an artsy fartsy look. If you don't know how to assemble the pics with an image-editing program (or don't have one to do so), email them along anyways in the aforementioned digital format and we'll do it here on our end.

4. If you have park photos but no scanner at your disposal, you can always send the prints to us, we will take care of scanning them, and then gladly return the prints to you if you want.

Send prints to:

The Sideways Guide

34 Oakwood Blvd.

Poughkeepsie, NY 12603

Send CD's to:

The Sideways Guide

34 Oakwood Blvd.

Poughkeepsie, NY 12603

Send your band's CD to the above address, or email an mp3 to the below address for posting in the Musick section...

musick[at]thesidewaysguide[dot]com

THANKS!!!