"My role is all over the place; I just roll with it," says Vancouver's Judah Oakes, making an appropriate play on words. The 38-year-old is a man of many hats, to say the least. He was a pro skater in the mid-‘90s, and became the team manager for Timebomb Trading in 1997, back when he was also on the team - representing the now-defunct Sheep shoes then etnies Canada during his days as a sponsored roller.

As Timebomb grew exponentially over the years, so did Judah's role. He now works in their art department, handling custom POP light box and widow display requests from retailers. And he still handles the skate TM duties, taking care of 40 teamsters representing Timebomb's brands across Canada.

Judah Oakes.

On top of all that, Judah shoots skate photos and has done so since the mid-‘90s. Over that span, his stills have been published in SLAP (when it was a print mag), Thrasher, Concrete, SBC, Color and more recently King Shit.

Before fully transitioning into skate photography, images of Judah's skating have been published in every North American skate publication. And for many years now, he's the only TM in Canada who dubs as a consistently published skate photographer. The dude is very familiar with both sides of the lens, so it's about damn time he's featured in a Lensman profile. Read on, and check out his selection of unpublished photos...

Vancouver, BC / June 2007

When did you start taking photography seriously?
I dabbled in it for a long time before I took it seriously. At first I was trying to be focus on being a sponsored skateboarder. I wasn't really a full "photographer" just yet. I moved to Vancouver from Victoria in '92 to skate, and in '97 I blew my knee out. I still hung out with everyone while they were skating, and started shooting a lot more because of the injury.

Which lensmen influenced you early on?
For the most part, I would say it was Scott Serfas and Jody Morris hands down. In the mid-‘90s they were the only guys in Vancouver who were really out there shooting. Serfas was working for Thrasher and Jody was working for Transworld. Skate photos of me that appeared in those mags were shot by those guys.

(keep clicking for more words and photos from Judah Oakes)