How did you get interested in photography?

It grabbed me the same way skating and cars did. Photography did the same thing as all of those for me. [laughs]

I’m super nerdy about the technical side. I’ll be watching YouTube videos until five in the morning, going down the rabbit hole and learning about cameras. People will tell you to buy a specific type of film, but I’ll buy all types of film and shoot everything because I need to learn and figure out my own style. I just started shooting slower film because I can shoot it throughout the day into the night without flash. I’m super into design and cameras are almost like old cars to me. They’re a mechanical and design feat. Every camera has its quirk and does something unique. It gives them all character.

Also, I’ve been on so many trips when I was younger and didn’t back my phone up or you break phones—years of memories I’ll never get back. I grew up going through photo books of my family and seeing my Mom and my Grandma… that’s why I like shooting film because I’ll always have a physical copy of that moment. I like the physicality of film photography but I shoot digitally too, to learn quicker and figure things out without having to wait to get film back and see what I did wrong. But also, I don’t feel like any photo you take is “wrongly taken,” it’s up to the eye of the beholder…unless you overexpose it and it just doesn’t come out. Sometimes the mistakes in a film photo are better than your actual idea. You end up with a lovely moment that you didn’t expect.

There’s something about shooting with a manual camera… it’s similar to why I like older cars. You’re driving a manual car and you feel the cracks in the road or you feel a rock, you know what I mean? I like the feeling when you shoot with a new camera or a new car.

I want to make a dark room and learn how to, like actively develop all my stuff, and do it kinda like the old school way. That would be really cool.

Skaters are obsessed with millimeters from their wheels to trucks. Technicality is central to your interests and skating, so how did that play into the Air Max Ishod?

The main difference is that the Ishod 2 has Air Max technology in the sockliner. The shoe itself is pretty thin and flexible, but the insole is teched out.

This one was about making the shoe better in every type of way. It started–on a conceptual level–as a high but it landed as a mid. I don’t like my feet getting hot so we adopted that mesh window from the first shoe and evolved it, we brought in the tread pattern from the 1, so there are aspects from the first shoe that carried over.

I wear Air Maxes in regular life a lot, so I wanted a steezy Air Max that I could skate but also keep it on and wear out. That was the basis of the design for the 2: play off the first shoe, improve on it, and make it stand out. I like the fit and how it sits on your foot, the flick is proper, and the sole has that Air Max pouch. In every way shape and form, it fits my needs better.

When I was working on the first shoe it was really important to me to have a design that didn’t look like any other silhouette in the line. I didn’t want people to say, “Oh that’s a riff on this or that,” because then my name would never come into the picture. Someone would compare it to the Dunk or the Blazer. If it’s a shoe that looked obscure and wasn’t recognizable immediately, it would raise questions: What shoe is that?

That’s Ishod Wair’s professional skate shoe. It has the Nike DNA but I wanted to make people curious.

Now that my name’s in the picture and people recognize my shoe as my shoe, it’s about making something that has more Nike blood. Now it’s, “Yo, what is that Air Max? I’ve never seen that one–it looks fire!” It’s Ishod’s second shoe. That made sense. I felt like moving toward a skateable Air Max was right. I’m hyped for it to come out. I knew that I couldn’t make something that looked like another shoe that would be lost in the sea of skate shoes.

Stefan’s (Janoski) shoe didn’t look like a Nike at the time and he broke boundaries and it became the shoe. People didn’t know they wanted it until they got it. I wanted to do something different in that way. If I got a signature shoe when I won Skater Of the Year in 2013, people would want the shoe just because “he’s the best skater in the world.” That’s not the point I’m at in my life right now. I had to go in and think about it differently. I’ve done a lot in my skate career and people know about my skating and who I am, so there has to be an idea–there has to be a reason for this shoe to exist. There has to be a reason for everything you do so it comes together better.

I look at my first shoe as a time in my life. I wanted to make a skate shoe. Not dancing around being a style shoe and a skate shoe. No, it’s 100% for skateboarding because skateboarding is what put me in the position to have my name on a shoe in the first place.

My second shoe is very much about the second part of my life. I still skate and love it as much as I always have but I have other interests. When I have some shoes that I can wear out to dinner, to the bar or whatever, and still skate in them and have that feeling… that’s where I’m at now. The first shoe was a testament to my younger self and this one is a testament to my twenties self. If I do get a third shoe, what would be the design to represent my 30s self you know?

Full luxury vehicle?

[laughs] I don’t know! It’s interesting to think about and it will be a blessing if it does happen. But that’s the ideology behind my shoes. I want to shout out to the design team. Working together with them, I wouldn’t be where I am without their hard work. I have ideas, but I can’t put them down on paper without the real designers. They took my ideas and drew up a bunch of things and we narrowed it down so quickly. We got to know each other during the first shoe and they nailed this one early on. I want this, I want that, and I saw the first one and it was like, “Yeah, you all get me!” We dialed it in and tweaked a few things but they read those ideas and what I wanted… the inspiration and they put everything together nicely. The first drawings… we looked at them and were like, “Yup, this is going to be much easier to bring to life.” It’s very rare to do something without help from external parties. What would a part or a shoe be without the people who collaborate and stand together to make something?

Both shoes were from the ground up–the tread, the mesh… we did bring some of those things over, but the first time we had to invent what an Ishod shoe was.

Can you go deeper on the Air Max tech? People have skated in Air Maxes before, but the concept of having that tech in a skate shoe hasn’t been explored in this way until the Air Max Ishod.

The main reason why we didn’t incorporate the Air Max pouch into the sole is because if you commit to having it one way it can really slow down the sampling process and you’ve kind of reached the point of no return.

If we built the bubble into the actual sole, it’s going to give the shoe a stiffer feel from the jump, and there can be other complications. We ended up putting windows in the actual sole and having the Air Max pouch being connected to the insole which will keep that board feel with the iconic look. It’s there, just inside the window and you get that hit in the back as well.

To your question, incorporating the Air Max tech took a little bit of brainstorming and workshopping. I’m not a shoe designer who has done the flex tests and impact tests, the team related the information with me and I thought about my needs and how that would work best with the opportunity to work within the Air Max lineage. To me, we made the right decisions based on the result–it’s a great looking and functioning skate shoe.

Were there specific details you pulled in from other Air Max shoes?

I found an image of an unreleased model online–a high-top, all-black leather Air Max that was sampled, but never came out. That was the inspiration for the high version of the shoe to be slimmed down to a mid. The design team drew some ideas in that vein and also bringing in design elements from 95s and 98s–those recognizable flowing lines throughout the design.

Most Air Maxes also have gillies which keep the shoe tight. It allows you to keep the shoe tied tight but it won’t look like clown shoes or all choked out. In most shoes with standard eyelets, the laces sit in a “V” but in most Air Maxes, the laces sit straight and allow you to sinch them tighter. It’s really hard to make an Air Max look choked if the shoe is your proper size. So you can wear your shoe loose or tight and you’ll still have that stability. With both of my signature shoes, the gillies come down inside and to the sole of the shoe, so when you’re tightening them up, it’s not just pulling the laces together, it’s pulling your foot literally into the shoe. It’s holding your foot to the sole, rather than pulling it tighter. It’s giving you real stability.

Why was it important for you to create the Air Max Ishod as a style you can hang out in, and skate in?

I[laughs] Air Maxes have always been fly. The style that I like and the sickest era pretty much in history, is the ‘90s. That’s the golden age of skateboarding. That’s the sickest footy. People aren’t doing a McTwist to front blunt down a 20-stair rail, it was about style and clean tricks. Organic street skating; that’s the golden age. The people from that era, you’d see them skating Air Maxes or hanging out in Air Maxes–being in New York wearing some 95s and kicking back. Air Maxes are fly. Period. I wanted to make something fly.

The Nike SB Air Max Ishod releases January 15 in select skateshops and Nike.com.