There are a few moments of action that are so transformative that they really deserve everyone’s attention. So, I’m not always focusing on that peak action, gnarly, big jump. Instead, I like to try and shoot imagery that evokes and captures the essence of the experiences we share in our love of the outdoors.

It’s hard for me to be the one to pick out where I’ve succeeded. That’s up to the jury of viewers online and in magazines. However, I do get to see which images ‘do well’ and resonate with people. One shot, of a mountain biker wearing red, riding away from the camera through the misty blue mystery of the coast rainforest is a shot that everyone seems to love. You see almost no trail, just a hint of a ladder bridge. The forest, its eerie light, and nature are the heroes.

“It’s funny how difficult it is to create imagery that is authentic to the experience of being in a place.”

Photography only captures a frame of a moment of visual light, where the experience of the moment as I shoot includes my relationship to the athlete, the day’s events, the current snow stability and danger, the smells and tastes that surround it.  So, looking back on the experience of a day, photography won’t often feel accurate to the experience. However, it will often feel like and encapsulate some specific emotion or altruism that’s important.

At age 20 when I started calling myself ‘a photographer’ I hadn’t backcountry skied, and I hadn’t gone on an overnight mountain bike trip. So, the learning curve has been steep. Skills, snow and safety knowledge, athletic speed, and style of movement have all come with time. When I started, athletes… er… friends with skills, would justifiably poke fun of my junky gear and lack of skill, but I made up for it with effort.

Photographers and mentors, Jordan Manley, and Christian Pondella, talk about being the athlete beside the talent and reducing gear volume to move quickly, and those perspectives manifested in the way I try to shoot now.

There isn’t a specific moment that you ‘transition’ from simple adventures to ‘extreme.’  It’s not like you all of a sudden acquire athleticism or skill to go further. Instead, it’s a slow creep where you find your interests and ambitions pushing you towards things that are harder to do. Maybe, if you want to pick out particular moments, the first time you’re using ropes in your skiing is when you might realize that you now can get into really difficult and consequential terrain.

I think the biggest challenge with risk, is trying to decipher and work with your own drive to do dangerous things. Why do you want to be there? How much does it matter to you? How quickly can these things end up really changing the course of your life? How does it affect your family? There’s no answer in that web of ambition and apprehension. But, you need to spend time wandering through those questions.

For people looking at going further into the backcountry, skills courses in avalanche, weather, and first aid are obvious, and mandatory. But, the more difficult and equally important thing is assessing and understanding how the people you choose to travel with effect your risk, your trajectory, and ultimate safety. Try traveling with a bunch of different people so you can start to assess everyone’s risk tolerance and style.

Spending time with people is valuable. No, that’s not a difficult or world changing idea. However, the simple and important things are often the most difficult to remember. I gained more from spending 3 weeks with Bjarne Salen (Skier, Cinematographer on the Eclipse trip) than from other friends I’ve known for years. It’s partly how great of a human he is, and equal part spending 3 weeks in a tent living together.

For any subject, be it human, sport, building, event or otherwise, there’s so much more to that thing than the thing itself. So, for skiing photography I’m trying to wrap location into a picture. For a location or landscape, I’m trying to find a way to capture that entire idea, not just the solitary subject.

There’s design in photography that makes us like an image; shapes, composition, contrast. However, to portray place I try to incorporate enough environment or side details to build out the locations we travel through. It’s not just a shot of Black Tusk that makes a Whistler place look like Whistler. 

For any subject, be it human, sport, building, event or otherwise, there’s so much more to that thing than the thing itself. So, for skiing photography I’m trying to wrap location into a picture. For a location or landscape, I’m trying to find a way to capture that entire idea, not just the solitary subject.

There’s design in photography that makes us like an image; shapes, composition, contrast. However, to portray place I try to incorporate enough environment or side details to build out the locations we travel through. It’s not just a shot of Black Tusk that makes a Whistler place look like Whistler. 

The rainforest’s details of old man’s beard, fog, whirling snow, those are the things that make me know I’m in Whistler, and not Aspen or Banff. Then, the trick is to avoid simply slapping one on top of the other, but using composition and design to beautifully incorporate all of the details into a single image.

Culture, as we often understand it, is a group of people’s way of living that we categorize by region. However, the cultures of action sport are partially location based, but more mindset based. I have more in common with some people from Colorado, than my neighbor in Squamish BC. So, I try to keep that in mind while shooting action, but also the lifestyle that surrounds the action. Those kinds of ideas make an image of someone melting wax onto a ski with an iron, into something that’s not just a static moment of movement, but a unifying action.

To one’s eye it burns above, but from no fuel
It dances without rhythm, ebbs and flows upon it’s own accord
To one’s skin it offers no warmth
Without warning, it doubles back and surges forward
To one’s year, curtains waving in the wind, a trick of the mind
Wind nor gale can blow the magical flames
To one’s nose and mouth, it pays no notice
Fire of the sky

The northern lights are magic, in the way they don’t act or respond to any stimulus or logical movement that we can easily understand. They move and appear in ways that are unlike anything else… they’re beyond comprehension.

We actually thought we had failed on the night we got the shot. We had tried many setups, for several hours in the frigid cold, and then we agreed to take on a final frame, success or failure. A camera setting made the image appear incorrect on the back of the camera, so we returned to camp with mediocre feelings. Only back on my computer at home did the image spring to life when I found the camera settings hadn’t been working. That was a tremendous feeling.

This shot took months of planning, but I still attribute the success largely to a good team and a ton of luck. We had to be on a certain strip on the earth where the moon’s shadow would lie, we needed clear skies, timing with skiers down to the minute, GPS, compass, and several scouted locations. For gear we had multiple cameras, huge lenses, special solar filters and batteries kept warm in our jackets. We had a short list of variants we wanted to try during the eclipse, and set ourselves up to tackle as many as we could.

Sport and outdoors were a huge part of my life growing up. My dad had a 35mm that went on vacation with us, and it always seemed to be a really cool mystical thing that would click a valuable piece of film once or twice a day at most.

When I started playing with cameras in my mid-teens, several friends were as well, which provided a great playful learning experience. Then, later it started to provide a creative outlet, and a way to become more of an individual, striving for something that was uniquely me, having grown up as the youngest of 3 boys in the family. Way back, I won an honorable mention in a newspaper photo contest

Way back, I won an honorable mention in a newspaper photo contest, with a bland photo of a waterfall that had been taken on one of the first rolls of film I shot. I think that little nod meant a lot to me back in the day, and out of most awards, it meant the most to me as a person, and brought me to where I am now.

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