Humming With Kris Burkhardt

photos shot by and courtesy of kris burkhardt. This photo of kris doing a huge ollie taken by Tyler Sueda.

It’s pretty rare to find someone who truly does it all. Someone who can film, edit, shoot photos, skate and be extremely good at all of them.

Kris Burkhardt is the rarity. He does it all and has done it all. He’s made amazing full-length videos, including 2018’s In the Doldrums and 2020’s HUM. He has parts in both that are honestly incredible. He has so much pop, in his In the Doldrums part frontside half cabs over a bump to bar and switch backside flips over a bin. Over the last few years has taken a career shift into shooting photos full time, being the staff photographer for Stussy and Last Resort. 

I’ve been a fan of Kris and his work for a long time and wanted to know how his trajectory from skater to filmer to photographer came to be.

kyle chavez polejam to curb, 2014.

Let’s start this from the start. Did you grow up in Santa Ana?  

I grew up in Huntington Beach but me and my friends would skate Santa Ana skatepark a lot, we would take the bus down. 

There are so many amazing skateboarders from the area.What was it like growing up skating there?

It’s funny seeing all the people that I grew up around who are in the industry now. When I started going to Santa Ana park Franky Villani was a really little kid. He would just try ollie down the big eleven stair, now seeing him today and he has a pro shoe on New Balance is pretty crazy. All the stuff that happened before my time too, it took me a while to find out about all the older videos, like the early Toy Machine and Baker videos, they were filmed all around my house. I lived only a couple blocks from the Warner Ave Apartments where Baker started. It was pretty insane as I got older, and I started recognizing all these spots they were skating.

Were they skating spots in your school?

Yeah, actually. We would always skate at the Middle School I went to, which was Mesa View Middle School and one time the principal came out and was telling us how pro skaters used to skate there all the time. In my head there were no good spots there so I was confused. I found out that Ed Templeton and Jason Lee would skate there all the time. There were these ledges that you can see in Welcome to Hell, I was tripping out when I found out it was the same school. Ed skated these tables there, he used the tabletops as flat gaps. My friends and I tried to recreate that later on, even though the tables are completely different. It was pretty cool to see all that.

Woah, that is so sick. Is it the same one Tom Karangelov, does the ollie up, then impossible in a Thunder part?

Yeah, that’s the school. You ollie up onto the table top and gap out over the top of the stairs.

How old were you guys when you found out?

I must’ve been in high school when I found out all that stuff. My art teacher was good friends with Ed Templeton and Jason Dill growing up, he would skate with them, and he had all these old New Deal, and Channel One boards in his classroom. He was sick, he would play Welcome to Hell and some of the older Toy Machine videos in class while people were painting. His name was Matt Harward I don’t know if he still works there but he was the art teacher at Huntington High when I was there.

That is so cool, it’s the most California thing ever. When did you get into filming?

In my freshman year of high school, I saved up and got my first camera, a Canon GL2. I didn’t know about the VX1000 yet and just got the camera that looked like that, with a handle and a microphone. I thought that’s just what people use to film skating, but it’s the worst camera. I hated that camera [laughs].

Hugo boserup lipslide curved ledge, 2022.

It is like the classic my first camera [laughs]. What made you get into filming?

I think just watching skate videos, and seeing what my friends were doing. I wanted to film all of it and make our own edits.

Yeah, you were making full length videos.

I made three videos that I would call full lengths, where I rented a theater and threw a premiere with all my friends. Those were the best times. It was so fun to do that stuff and have everyone work on the video together. 

It always seems like it’s the one in the crew who isn’t skating that much or gets to the point where they are chilling on the session because they can’t skate the spots the crew is skating who starts filming but you were still skating so well.

Oh, thanks. What made me think that I could do both was that Matt Bublitz, who works for Thrasher now, he’s five years older than me and him, Tom K and Andy Smith were all living in Huntington Beach. Matt made a video called Warfare and he had a part in it too. It was around the same time I got the camera, and I was like I want to do the same thing, film a video with my friends and have a part in it too.

That video is really good too.

Yeah, Warfare is awesome. I still watch it from time to time.

You were getting Quasi boards around the time you were making videos too, right?

Yeah, I think in 2016. I was making those videos and when you’re like twenty and skating a bunch, it’s hard to buy boards when you're going through them like every week. I really like Quasi, and they were the only boards I was skating. So I sent them some footage, and they were kind enough to respond. They gave me boards for like five years which is crazy. I was also getting Vans shoes too. So that was awesome, getting free product and being able to skate as much as I could. It helped me a ton, thanks Chad Bowers and Johnny Layton.  

Kevin shealy ollie mailbox, 2022.

Were you ever thinking you could be a pro skater while your friends around you were doing it.

No, I kind of never thought I was that good. I just liked filming video parts. I saw my friends around me who were at that level of skating, and I knew where I was at. In my head they were probably down to send me product because I was making videos, but I never thought I was going to get on a team or be pro [laughs].

Dude, I don’t know. The frontside half cab over the bump to bar in In the Doldrums was pretty gnarly.

[Laughs] Oh, thanks. That took a long time, it was really hard.

It seemed like in 2020, I started seeing your photos everywhere, was that around the time you started shooting?

I got into photography in 2009, but started shooting skate photos around 2012 when I graduated high school. We didn’t have a photographer in our crew. So I went onto this forum, SkatePerception and I figured out what gear the skate photographers were using. Sam Muller, who is an amazing photographer, had a tutorial on how to do off-camera flashes, and once I saw that I felt I could take a decent skate photo. If I was filming a trick, in the early stages, I would shoot stills and then hopefully get one, then I would switch to the video camera. I did both for a little while. When I started getting free product, I just wanted to skate as much as I could and focus on making videos. So I stopped shooting stills for a bit, then in 2020 my friend Thomas Goldman who was living in LA moved back to Virginia, he was the guy shooting photos in our crew. My friend Sully [Salomon Cardenas] needed a photo and I was like I actually can shoot skate photos too, so I did that for him. From there people started hitting me up to shoot skate photos, and It snowballed from there. I think Covid played a big part in that, people weren’t traveling so you had to work with the people who were nearby. That year I started focusing more on photography, and took a break from making videos. 

How does it feel doing it full time?

It’s amazing. All I have ever wanted to do is skate, travel, and work on projects with my friends. So I couldn't be happier to make a living doing it.

And you’re working for such good companies too.

Yeah, I’ve been lucky enough to work for brands that I really like. I wouldn't want to be with anyone else. 

It seems really nice, it’s all your friends too.

Yeah, I couldn’t imagine doing this for random companies or traveling with random people. I just got really lucky, and now anything I work on is with my friends. Thanks to Jesse Alba, Nick Rios, Logan Lara, Chris Milic. They’re the reason I've had most of my opportunities.

Karim Callender 5-0 Altadena, 2022.

Have you been skating much lately or are you just mainly shooting photos when you’re out?

I’ve mostly been shooting photos; I’ve been pretty busy doing that. Whenever we are out, I feel the need to be shooting. I still try to go to the skatepark every day, I just haven’t been filming tricks. It’s pretty hard sometimes.

It’s good you’re still skating. I feel like so many people pick up a camera and then they’re just done with skating.

That's one of the best parts of my job. I’m always out with people skating, so I actually have the option to skate. When I was working retail the hours were pretty annoying for skating, so now im skating way more than my first few years living in LA.

I wanted to ask as a skate nerd who grew up around LA. How has it been watching skating in the city go from being big rails and picnic tables to house spots?

Oh, It’s so weird. I grew up going to LA on weekends to go skate and I kind of hated it. I never thought I’d live here. I also wouldn’t have expected us to ever skate in the areas we skate in now, especially when it’s people's front yards and stuff, it’s a bit stressful. I don’t want to skate someone’s house [laughs]. I definitely grew up on the school yard weekend skate missions. It feels like a whole different lifetime. Hopping a twelve-foot fence to skate some shitty planter ledges in The Valley [laughs] The house spots are much more photogenic than the schoolyards though.

[Laughs] I can’t believe that was all people were doing now looking back.

That was the peak of my filming too. I would film my friends try ledge lines for two or three hours. Now we joke that I can’t remember the last time I watched someone try a line.

This is a random one to wrap this up, did you edit Ethan Loy’s Element Pro part?

Yeah.

Why does it say, “Edited by Jesse Alba”?

I grew up with Ethan, he is a good friend of mine, and he asked me to edit his part. Jon Miner was working at Element and had just left, so they had no staff filmer or editor. We were on this road trip during Covid, and I was working on it the whole time we were on the road; it was due during that time. Jesse just kept giving me shit for working on it and not being present on the trip, I would just lock myself in my room, or have my headphones on in the van editing. Also it's an Element video, so it was just a funny little joke between us. I think it’s funny because Jesse makes videos, so there are people out there who truly think he made that video [laughs].