I came across this guy the first day in Tokyo, cruising through the insanely busy streets of the Shibuya district with Jen Hudak and Julian Carr last February. This guy, damn. If I were a bum, I’d probably look exactly like him. Scary look into the future huh? We tried to have an impromptu Discrete Headwear shoot but even after we offered him money, he declined. But I at least got this one.
7246 miles (4584 miles on the road), 47 days, and 7 terrain park shoots, and 43,225 dead bugs on my car later my season is finally over and I’m finally home back in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year’s Spring terrain park shoot season was shorter than last year, but the amount of travel between shoots really wore on me this Spring. It was nuts actually, and home never looked so good. My own bed, my own space, not working on my slow laptop, and having my golf clubs, being able to sneak out for some golf in the work day, everything, all the comforts of home…finally! However, it was all completely worth it. I got a lot of great action shots with a lot of the usual people but also some new faces. I got to spend some time with some good friends I don’t get to see a lot, visit new places, see family, oh and to find out that 4th gear in my Civic tops out at 130mph!
Also in this trip I did a lot of fun portraits, spent some time working more on capturing the lifestyle side of things and shot a lot with a Holga which was pretty fun. Shooting film, the mystery of wondering how things are going to turn out, especially with the thought of a very inprecise piece of camera equipment, adding in the mystery of how cross processing is going to turn out made for some fun stuff. I just sent it all out to Panda photo lab in Seattle, WA and I’m really excited to see how it turned out. I’m really anxious to see how it all plays out with the good ol film. It’s been at least 5 years since I shot any film.
Once I hit the road back home, I was all in, from Bend, OR to Hood River, OR to take a few portraits, then finally home to Salt Lake City, UT. Did it all straight through, starting at 10am in Bend, then arriving home in Salt Lake City, UT at 3am. I probably should have stayed the night in Boise but I was determined to sleep in my own bed ASAP, so 17 hours later I was there, at home, in my own bed and was worth every second on the road.
I’ll have a bit more later with some random photos from the spring in a few days.
My Chilean trip continues as we have left Portillo down to Santiago for a day before heading back up to Farellones, home of the 3 Valleys of La Parva, El Colorado and Valle Nevado ski resorts. We were supposed to be heading to Las Lenas, however they decided to back out on the lift tickets they had promised us two and a half months ago so we had to go to plan B. Heh, we had no plan B! Soooo we ended up calling Mark Lassiter again over at www.southamericaski.com to organize a last minute plan B. We ended up with the 3 valleys with a slough of plans including being in Chile on Sept 18th, the Chilean independence day for some partying with the locals.
We arrived on a foggy and rainy morning that cleared out just in time for sunset. Farellones has some amazing sunsets, any day you can see the sun. The smog in Santiago is pretty gnarly but having a positive byproduct of making sick sunsets, just about every day up in the mountains. Farellones is a pretty small town at the base of El Colorado resort and below La Parva and Valle Nevado resorts. We’ve had quite the contrast of places we have been in Chile from the luxury of Portillo to more of a true South American experience in Farellones. We have been staying at a hostel called Refugio Aleman which has some really amazing views back towards Santiago and right into the sick daily sunsets through the smog of Santiago.
We will have a few more days here in Farellones with Anna’s friend Benny from Mammoth since Refugio Aleman is only a ski hostel and is closing for the season today! We have a sunset jump session planned as well as a few more jibs so the shooting should be pretty fun. After that we will be at La Parva for a day then the last day hopefully doing another road lap day on the Santa Teressa slope between El Colorado and Valle Nevado for fun without the camera on my back, then going straight to the airport and outbound back to Utah. Here’s a few photos of Farellones
So Anna and I have arrived in Portillo, Chile along with our new friend Chris Taine from NZ. For the most part Chilean drivers are kinda crazy. On our ride up our bus driver didn’t think 120kph was fast enough for a bus so he kept passing cars left and right. When we got to the mountain road on the way to Portillo, he felt that he (and everyone else) didn’t need to wait for trucks and passed very slowly on blind corners. Kinda sketchy eh? Now add in the fact that most vehicles on the highway were semi’s and yah, that was kinda sketchy. Apparently people in Argentina are more agro than drivers in NYC or Boston. Ha, looks like it should be an interesting ride…I think we will be picking seats in the middle of the bus!
After having a pretty uneventful bus ride up we ran across a road block of a overturned semi with it’s trailer torn in half. Yah, what do you think hapened there huh? Anyhoo after driving up 32 switchbacks we arrived at the Portillo Lodge, a beautiful yellow and blue lodge in a steep valley. The peaks here are big, steep, and very scenic. I’m stoked to get out and ski and shoot…..when the spring ice softens up!
So I just arrived in the first foreign country outside of North America in 3 years. I’ve been waiting to go for the past 2 months and I’m super stoked to be out here. I’m shooting a story for Australian and New Zealand Skiing magazine for next Winter’s editorial schedule with Aussie skier Anna Segal. Santiago was a lot of fun. After staying in a hotel pretty well in downtown we cruised around the city on the subway and by foot. Santiago is a pretty cool city of about 7 million people with a lot of bums and street performers that expect money for taking their photos! From bums runing around with a horn and drum to a group of cheerleaders that would perform at the stop lights, they all expect money regardless of if they jumped in front of your camera or not!
The tour operator, Mark Lassiter of www.southamericaski.com hooked us up with one of his friends Vince and his friend Chris Taine where we met up for some dinner and drinks after cruising around town. As it turns out Chris was heading to Portillo and is going to stay with us and ski for a few days too.
More later with a bit of skiing. We have 7 days in Portillo, Chile coming up, then to Mendoza, Argentina, then off Las Lenas, another day in Santiago before I head home to Salt Lake City, Utah.
So just another jaunt from Seattle, back home to Salt Lake City, Utah. This time around I had an even later start than normal, had to drive overnight, rolling in at about 11am in SLC. Hey at least I got to see someone road rage on me with his 10 year old daughter in the car! Also of course got to see the sunrise and of course snapped a few photos.
Well add to the bag reviews, here’s another one. The F-Stop Lotus. The Lotus was designed as a pack to carry a smaller amount of camera gear than the Tilopa or the Satori, however it just seems to work really well to carry the bulkiest of all the photo gear, the battery powered strobe kit. The Lotus works best with a Profoto 7b kit as you can fit the power pack, 2 heads and a the adjustable reflector inside. With the Elinchrom Ranger kit you can only fit 1 head in there due to the larger size of the Elinchrom Freelite heads, however you can easily fit an extra battery in with the different orientation of the Elinchrom Ranger power pack. With an Ranger kit in the Lotus you can fit the power pack, extra battery, charger, standard reflector and one Freelite head.
One of the great things about the F-Stop Lotus pack for carrying a battery powered strobe kit is how well the pack carries, and how well it carries on the front of your body. Now for most photographers that sounds pretty stupid to carry the pack on the front of your body but for outdoor sports photographers that carry these strobe kits along with the rest of their cameras an lenses on their back it does matter. I’ve skied with this pack on my chest with the F-Stop Satori fully loaded on my back. Now I wouldn’t ski this setup off-trail but skiing with it in a terrain park or something of the sort is much easier than with any of the other packs I’ve tried doing this with.
The Lotus, like all of the current F-Stop backpacks has a partial internal frame which makes these things carry like no other packs on the market. One last great thing about this pack is how small it folds up to. You can put your strobe kit into your Pelican case to fly with, then fold up the Lotus and put it in with the rest of your luggage, taking up very little space and weight. When folded up this pack is a mere one inch thick. To me this is a big deal. It makes traveling with the strobe kit a lot easier.
Volume: 35 Liter
Torso Length: 18.5″
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