Element Crew in Croatia

November 07, 2008 @ 7:28 AM

By Deeli

I got an email yesterday from the Element etc filmer Yves Marchon with links to a couple of clips from old trips we did together. The footage brought back some great memories so I thought I’d post the photos here. This first one is from a trip across Slovenia and Croatia and back together with the Element Europe crew and Oli’s éS Europe team. Some of these guys don’t ride for those brands anymore, some of them don’t even skate. But a few are still on the same trip, still going for it, still enjoying the best things that skating can offer us. Some of these photos were published in Kingpin, I can’t remember which issue, some were used in a little Finnish mag Numero that I was doing at the time. One or two might never have been published I think. I lost the text to both the articles that came out of this trip, I think Eric Antoine did something for Sugar with éS guys and there was probably an article in Austrias Yeyo and maybe even in Slovenia’s Pendrek. Lots of photographers on that trip. The beauty of Central Europe is that everything is so close that people can just show up on a session in a different country at a couple of hours’ notice. Which is pretty much what happened with Jaka Babnik in Split and with Yeyo’s Pauli in Sibenik, if I remember well. Anyway, scroll down for some photos from 2003 and keep scrooling for a link to Yves’s website and the footage. I’ll get a coffee going and get all nostalgic with an old sweet roll from yesterday, that they sell 2 for a euro in the corner shop. Can you believe that? That’s Finland for you. Bet a euro would get me a whole bag full of fresh pies in Sibenik.

Stick this on for a soundtrack. I remember that tune blasting on the car stereo when we crossed the border to Croatia and saw all the houses sprayed with machine guns. Surreal.

Bas Janssen on the bs flip in Ljubljana. What a nice place. I’d just bought the fisheye before this trip. I remember telling Eric that I kind of had to, since the people buying ad photos in Finland had suddenly decided that you had to have that lens. Eric was hating on the lens. I told him I had rent to pay. He told me he could pay a lot of rent with the price of that lens. I ended up selling that fisheye to Sem and buying a new one from Wig. Still paying rent with it.

Bas blasting a fs flip. I actually skated this rail after shooting the photo. Must be the last rail I ever skated. I think Eric shot a photo of it. Yves missed it.