Thanks to his older brother, 5 year-old Nick Felton was inspired by his sibling role model to get into skateboarding growing up in Fallon, Nevada. From the first moment he learned to skate, his feet have not strayed from his board since, and after being introduced to photography he has now transitioned into taking photos for some of Reno’s finest skateboarders. Slowly over time his passion eventually turned into a budding occupation as a documenter of a growing scene.
”My oldest brother was super into skateboarding when I was super little, and me and my middle brother always did what he was doing... type of deal,” Felton said. “I got a board I think when I was five, and I lived down the street from the skate park in Fallon. Before I knew it I was spending every day there after school, every weekend, it’d be like 9 to 5 at the skatepark.”
How he got into photography is its own separate answer.
”When I started taking photos, it’s actually funny,” Felton said. “I signed up for an auto tech class and I got kicked out of it and the only other class I could take was photography, so I took photography and I ended up just enjoying shooting photos. I always wanted to be artistic and I always felt like that was my medium, you know, it just made sense.”
SInce then Felton has racked up quite the resume with his skateboarding shoots. He has been featured in several local magazines including Thrasher, which is one of the biggest skateboarding magazines that was started in 1981 by Eric Swenson and Fausto Vitello. He has even started his own local magazine, “Seven Ply Mag”. Currently, they don’t have any issues left to share, but you can check out their Instagram, @sevenplymag.
“It’s a local ‘photozene’,” Felton explained. “It’s been about 30 to 40 photos each issue. We’ve done a couple and we have a few on the way and it’s basically just local skaters and then every issue we’ve featured a local artist that’s some way tied in with the skateboarding scene.”
That artist gets a lot of their work published on several pages of the magazine.
“We’re just trying to keep it all Reno based. The motto is ‘Let Local Roll’. It’s not anything we’re trying to make money off of, it’s just something when we’re older we can look back on it, almost like scrapbooks, but it’s photos in magazines that we did. It’s cool because there’s some younger kids that get really excited about it. It’s more of a fun thing to do than anything so there’s a way for me to have a portfolio and show this is what I can do.”
To make ends meet, Felton currently has a job doing photography for a real estate company, while he manages at Wild Garlic. He is working at Wild Garlic until he makes enough money to work full-time he says as a photographer.
He sees continued growth in the local skateboarding scene, which could offer more opportunities as well.
”Reno is super cool and the scene is super cool. It’s like up and coming. This year we’ve had like people like Thrasher, that I know, is the first people from Reno that made it. Of our generation, it’s actually a coming up place and it’s like on the map now, is what everyone says, it’s on the map now. When I first moved to Reno, I came from Fallon, I didn’t have any friends and all of my friends that I’ve met are mostly from skateboarding.”
He says the Reno skate community supports each other with all their ventures.
“Everyone’s really motivated right now. A lot of people you’re gonna see come out of Reno doing goods things with skateboarding which is cool. It’s definitely in a good state now, it’s progressed. The owner of Classic Skate Shop, Eric Lantto, he does a lot for Reno skateboarding which is awesome.”
Felton himself has worked for Lantto as a photographer. He also wants to hit the road and branch out, to cast his photography wider and feel freer and discover more of the world.
”I would be in a van with a bunch of professional skateboarders taking photos with them and hopefully only being at home a couple weeks or months a year, always on the road. That’s the dream. I’ve done a couple of things very small scale with that and I have a couple of friends that are pro and got on a couple of trips to Southern California and Vegas but nothing to the extent of traveling the world. Hopefully one point we’ll get there.”