I recently went to spend a little time with an old and very good friend of mine Matt who resides over in Sheffield in South Yorkshire. Not too long ago he set up his own company making bespoke, hand made skateboards under the name Manifest Skateboards. About a year ago I did a small amount of work for him concerning some graphics for his decks. As a gesture in kind, Matt agreed to make a deck for my brother who is well into his skateboarding. For one reason or another I’d not seen Matt for a while, but I got to see the deck that he had made for my brother at Christmas time when visiting the family. I was blown away at what a beautiful thing it was. A well made, well finished, beautiful wooden skate deck with the Manifest logo emblazoned across it in black paint. Now I hung up my skate shoes many years ago, but the craftsmanship that had gone into this deck made me want to fish them out and start skating again right there and then. Made with the freshest, tastiest Canadian maple ply, (which is a Manifest tag line) this deck was an absolute thing of beauty. My brother was chuffed to bits with it too.
I got in touch with Matt to thank him for making this beautiful deck and to let him know how how stoked my brother was to have received it through the post. As old friends do, we got chatting about all sorts and putting the world to rights etc, but also during the conversation I said that I would like to come and make a video of Matt and his skateboard making endeavours and perhaps take some promotional photos for his company. He thought this was a great idea. So that is exactly what we did. It was great to catch up with my old friend too.
Below are some of the images I took for Manifest Skateboards. You can also see the video I made here: Crash, Bang, Wallop!
© Mike Barrett Photography 2018 – All Rights Reserved
