About the last thing I’d ever expected was to have a urban skiing photo in National Geographic. Well, that day has come and it’s a pretty cool one. It’s not in the magazine, it’s just their “Extreme Photo of The Week” but hey, I don’t care it’s just cool. This shot of Nick Martini at Powder Mountain during a Poor Boyz Productions shoot last season was recently in the January issue of Powder Magazine but National Geographic Adventure picked it up for their website.
One of the added benefits of shooting with Byron Wells is since he’s from New Zealand and their ski magazines come out in June I get to see my photos in print a lot earlier than waiting 6 months for the photos to run in the ski magazines up in the Northern Hemisphere. This year is no different except Byron’s a bit more prominent in the magazine this time! Apparently the cover has some pretty good detail treatment with a bunch of foil print on the text so I’m pretty excited to see it in person. This is a shot from 2010 in Park City in this little backcountry urban zone as I like to call it that crews have been milking for the past few seasons. The old mining buildings in this zone make for some pretty unique shooting opportunities. This shot has was actually a horizontal shot and was cropped quite a bit to fit the vertical cover. Just about every time I’ve shot urban with Byron, it’s something he hasn’t tried before, but we always end up getting shots. He’s one hard working kid that wants to get shots. Glad Byron finally has a cover shot down there. Check out the original below.
Freeskier Magazine – February 2011 – P23 – Chris Logan – Sun Valley, ID – Level 1 Productions
Freeskier Magazine – February 2011 – P28 – LJ Strenio – Park City, Utah – 4Bi9 Media
Freeskier Magazine – February 2011 – P48 – LJ Strenio – Mt. Bachelor, OR – Poor Boyz Productions
Freeskier Magazine – February 2011 – pp62-63 – Sage Cattabriga-Alosa
Freeskier Magazine – February 2011 – pp84-85 – Tom Wallisch – St. Paul, MN – Level 1 Productions
Freeskier Magazine – February 2011 – pp104 – Adam Delorme – Logan, UT – Level 1 Productions
Last season was quite the interesting one. It was one not full of a lot of shots due to the low snowpack and just terrible weather in general, however the few good shots I did get last season, I was super pumped on. This was one of them. This feature was the entire reason I went on this trip to Montana to shoot urban with Poor Boyz Productions and Alexis Godbout, Matt Walker, Charles Gagnier and LJ Strenio in tow. Everyone else was doing a lot of spin and tap tricks on this feature but Alexis had something else in mind here. I was running around in circles, changing the lighting setups between everyone else, then Alexis doing his handplant to right 180, completely opposite from the norm.
Like my caption on the ad says, I brought everything I had to this feature. (1) Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed w/A head, (1) Alien Bee 1600, (1) Alien Bee 800, (1) Alien Bee 400, (5) Nikon SB 80DX Speedlights and a pile of Pocket Wizard Plus 2′s and Multimax’s. It was a ton of backlighting with a lot of tricky single speedlight placement throughout that took a lot of trial and error to get it dialed. Fortunately for me, there was a lot of trial and error going on with the skiers to get the trick they wanted, giving me a lot of time to get my lighting dialed as well.
Nikon D3,Tamron 28-75 f2.8 LD XR Di SP lens, Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed, Alien Bees 800, 400, Nikon SB80 DX’s, Pocket Wizard Plus 2 and MultiMaxTranscievers
2011 Powder Magazine Photo Annual Cover – Skier: Kyler Cooley.
Shot during the filming of “Gunnie Season” by 4Bi9 Media
This is the one, this is it. It’s the biggest thing that’s happened to me in my career. It’s the Powder Magazine Photo Annual, and my photo of Kyler Cooley is on the cover! My first Powder cover came last season (see it here) and it was a big deal. A real big deal for me. Literally a childhood dream. Now, a year later there’s another, but it’s on the Photo Annual. It’s the biggest issue of the season for the photographers and honestly it’s something I didn’t really consider ever getting. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy about it! If it doesn’t quite sink in to how happy I am, check this out and it will explain it a bit better.
I just got some pdf’s of the recent shots I’ve had over in Powder Magazine this season so I thought I’d share.
September 2010 Powder Magazine Shooting Gallery – Tyler Barnes sliding a quad kinked C-rail in Ogden, Utah
Nikon D3,Tamron 28-75 f2.8 LD XR Di SP lens, Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed, Alien Bees 800, 400, Nikon SB80 DX’s, Pocket Wizard Plus 2 and MultiMaxTranscievers
The thing I love the most about this shot is how clean it came out at ISO 1600!
October 2010 Powder Magazine Shooting Gallery – Alexis Godbout doing his best to get out of church in Helena, MT
Nikon D3, Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8D ED lens, Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed, Alien Bees 800, 400, Nikon SB80 DX’s, Pocket Wizard Plus 2 and MultiMaxTranscievers
This is probably my most favorite thing ever written in a ski magazine. I’m pretty stoked my photo fit it rather perfectly. Check it out if you get a chance.
October 2010 Powder Magazine – Page 66
November 2010 Powder Magazine – LJ Strenio “Voice” profile
December 2010 Powder Magazine – Tom Wallisch
Nikon D3,Tamron 28-75 f2.8 LD XR Di SP lens, Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed, Pocket Wizard Plus 2 Transcievers
This ad kind of summarizes my season from the start in November 2009 to the finish in July of 2010. It was a long season for me as I did extend it a little with the shoot at the Sammy Carlson Invitational in July at Windell’s Camp at Timberline, Oregon.
The highlight of this ad for me is the shot of Dane Tudor during the Sammy Carlson Invitational, right side, middle photo. It was my first experience with the Pocket Wizard FlexTT5′s for Nikon and things worked out well, very well, better than I had expected. I had just gotten the beta versions of the FlexTT5′s for Nikon and hadn’t had much time to really play with them so I was a bit worried to try them out but I gave them a go. The weather dealt us a full house that evening with the low clouds streaming in the valley from the west leaving an epic view with the low cloud layer and the sunset light. To top it off my first day testing the Pocket Wizard FlexTT5′s for Nikon turned out great. I had manual hypersync to two Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed strobes at 1/1000 sec. with partial coverage (all I wanted to light was the top half of the frame where the skier would be) at over 600 feet.
I’m really happy with how the Scott ad campaign came out this season and that I got to be a part of it last season. I’m looking forward to doing it again this season.
Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200 f2.8 ED VR, Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed, Alien Bees 800, 400, Nikon SB80 DX’s, Pocket Wizard Plus 2 and MultiMaxTranscievers
This is the final ad in the Tom Wallisch Scott Sports advertising campaign in the November issue of Freeskier Magazine. The Olympus quad kink in Salt Lake City, Utah is a rail I’ve been to three times since I’ve been shooting skiing, all pretty well failed attempts for me for various reasons and I’ve avoided shooting this rail in the past due to that. Of course with Tom, it became a different story as the disaster on made it very much worthwhile. The weather also came together for us on this one as well since my favorite thing to do is shooting strobed photos while it’s snowing. It just fills the frame so much better and gives a feel of winter to the scene.
The previous attempts failed mostly because of speed and my ignorance at the time to how much speed is required for such a mellow, long rail. With the 4Bi9 crew though, we had a ton of people to help, and that included some people to drive a car for a tow-in so we had all the speed in the world here.
This was the 2nd of 3 ads for a Scott campaign featuring their top freeskier, Tom Wallisch (check out the first ad here). I worked with Tom a lot this season specifically for this campaign and I’m pretty stoked on the shots and that it was based on what we both wanted to shoot as opposed to being confined to a creative breif. It was a go out, get some epic shots and we will work with it in the end. It allowed us to produce the best shots we could, which is something I’m stoked on. You can’t really ask for much more but a blank canvas.
This shot in particular was the primary reason I came out to Minnesota for that trip with Level 1 Produtions. I knew that feature would produce something I’d be stoked on and it was something I could really spend time with the lighting on. It was a miserably cold night for the whole crew of myself, Kyle Decker (Filmer for Level 1), Tom Wallisch, Ahmet Dadali and Liam Downey and we had some challenges with some equipment and being extremely visable from a major road but everyone got their tricks, their shots and it was one extremely productive day/night.
Shot in Minneapolis, MN with Level 1 Productions for their new film “Eye Trip“
Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200 f2.8 ED VR, Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed, Alien Bees 800, 400, Nikon SB80 DX’s, Pocket Wizard Plus 2 and MultiMaxTranscievers
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