Behind the Scenes - Night Running
Often when I’m driving I spend a lot of time brainstorming. Thinking about ideas, anything from business developments to marketing plans to photo ideas. Lots of these ideas are just passing and I might think about them for the duration of my drive and thats it, but others I’ll write down when I stop and come back to them. This particular idea was the latter.
Elinchrom - THREE
While this year was one of the worst winters I've ever seen in British Columbia, the challenges inspired me to find new ways to create images in the mountains. As an outdoor photographer, I can’t control the weather but I can play with light and shadow.
The Concept
I’ve always been drawn to sports images shot at night as they are not the most common. In the fall, my friend and skier, Mauri Cambilla, sent me a photo saying he had always wanted to do something like this. It was a night photo of skiing, and it started a conversation and an idea that eventually led to this project.
Behind the Scenes - Silhouette Bike
This idea built on a shoot I did early in the year. That shoot can be seen HERE. Skateboarding was my original idea and after we shot that I was stoked how it came out and decided to expand on the concept further. At first I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and brainstormed some ideas before randomly stumbling on flatland BMX. While scrolling through my phone I remember having seen someone post on a local Facebook group asking if anybody had built a BMX bike recently. I went back and tried to find this post and searched the group and ending up coming across a video of someone riding in Whistler. The rider in the video was good and that was when I thought flatland BMX would be a good option. I reached out to the rider, Mickael Loiodice, and after I explained my concept he was down to give it a go.
Behind the Scenes - Duo Massage - Scandinave Spa Whistler
This was a commercial shoot for the Scandinave Spa in Whistler. They were interested in featuring a new product, Duo Massage and the goal was to capture imagery that highlighted this experience. In my conversations leading up to this shoot I knew they wanted to create a warm welcoming feeling that gave an inviting feel to the experience.
Behind the Scenes - Portrait of a Skier
Rain, high winds and overall bad weather led to a mountain closure and a down day this season in Bariloche, Argentina. Since I didn’t want to not shoot anything this day I made a plan to capture some portraits since we weren’t able to get out on the mountain. Behind the lodge we were staying in was a new construction project that was partially completed. I had poked my head in a few days before and liked the look and knew I wanted to get in here to shoot at some point. I knew who was doing the construction so I asked for permission and got the go ahead to head in.
Behind the Scenes - Sunset Park Shoot
I was excited going into this shoot! In the past Whistler Blackcomb has done lots of sunset park shoots, but they haven’t happened as often in recent years. This past two year filmmakers Ryan Regher and Jeff Thomas were working on a couple video projects for WB and had the right pull to be able make a few different sessions happen.
Prior to this year my opportunities to participate in a sunset park shoot like this had been limited, so I jumped at the chance when Ryan gave me a call. Photo assets weren’t specifically necessary for either of these shoots, but knowing how rare these sunset shoots are I still wanted to make it happen. Without the pressure of needing to deliver specific images it allowed for more creative freedom to capture the images I wanted to.
Behind the Scenes - Blue and Yellow
Over the years I’ve always been intrigued by the Red Bull Illume photo contest. The work that makes it to finals of this event is some of the greatest action sports photography from a laundry list of the best action sports and adventure photographers in the world. I always make a point of entering this contest and finding images in my collection to submit.
Behind the Scenes - The Escape
Like most people, I spend way more time than I should on social media just scrolling through imagery. I find myself visually attracted to images with a cinematic feel, that are dark and moody, with lots of deep blacks. While most of my work I shoot is on the brighter side I was inspired to create something that had this feel.
Behind the Scenes - Whitewater Kayaking
I first shot kayakers on this waterfall years ago but at the time just used natural light. We shot on a cloudy day, and at the time I was excited about the images, but looking back my excitement had faded and they weren’t super strong. They kayaking was still impressive, but the images were flat and weren’t anything special.
I had the idea towards the end of last summer to try and shoot the falls using a flash to create a more dynamic image that showcased the power of the water and the shape of the waterfall. At that time of year the water is to low to safely paddle so it needed to wait. I sat on the idea for the winter and waited until the spring when the water levels would be higher.
Behind the Scenes - Bike Build
This shoot came around last minute. Keon reached out to me looking to get some photos of his bike, but wanted to get them done before he started riding it. The original photographer he was going to work with fell through. We had never met, but a friend recommended me and when he asked I immediately had an idea of how I wanted to make it look so I said I’d be down to give it a go.
Behind the Scenes - Silhouette Skate
This idea lived in my head for a while. When I first thought about it I was hurt, on crutches, and spending most of my time on the couch. With all this time to brainstorm I was able to come up with ideas I was excited about but had no ability to actually execute them. Therefore I sat on this one for a while and figured out the logistics of making it work.
Behind the Scenes - Athlete Portraits
Recently I asked to shoot a portrait of Canadian Snowboarder Cam Spalding that matched some previous portraits of athletes I had shot.
When I first started shooting these portraits I knew I was going to need to repeat the look between multiple different athletes. These portraits needed to feel similar, but didn’t need to be identical. From the get go I decided to use a very simple lighting setup as I expect to need to repeat this more and won’t always have the luxury of doing so from home.
Behind the Scenes - The Return Home
I wanted to create an image of returning home after a day on the hill skiing. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could create an evening scene in the middle of the day. We shoot these images around noon on a partially sunny day.
Board Building - Photo Gallery
Exploring different activities and learning about them is always intriguing to me. Before shooting this day I had never been around anybody boards in this way. I’ve had a few friends build snowboards, but the process is different. Other then having a general idea of what the space looked like I really didn’t know what to expect.
Trail Running
This image was shot as part of a personal project. I had the idea of wanting to shoot a top down image that really showed the body position of the runner through the shadow. This location is at a local park and a walking bridge passes over the gravel trail below. This was the perfect location as it allowed me to get above my athlete (Will Goneau) as he ran through. It took a few tries to get the exact body position with the shadow, but since we were working in a small space it was easy to have Will run through multiple times.
Behind the Scenes - Shadow Running
This wasn’t the particular image I had planned for the day, but I’ve had an idea similar to this in my mind for a while. I picked up the athlete, Will Goneau, from nearby this location, and thought if we had time we could check it out after we finished the original shot we planned to try this other idea I had.
We focused on the first shot, which was a top own running image in the forest. After we completed this image I asked Will if he was down and we went back to the underground parking lot.
Fly Fishing - Photo Gallery
I’ve fished on occasion throughout my life, and I keep telling myself to get into it, but it always gets pushed to the wayside when things get busy. However I’ve been visually interested in fishing for a long time, often seeing imagery come from this world that is stunning. Fishing normally seems to coincide with the early morning, or the late evening. From a photography perspective this is perfect, generally the best light of day, and the most likely time to get fog rising of water.
Behind the Scenes: Shooting with a Remote Camera
As a photographer, I often wish I could be in multiple places at the same time to get imagery from a few angles. This specifically happens when shooting a jump where each rider might only take a couple tries.
When I first show up to a jump I usually try and do a full 360 around the jump. Checking out every angle to see where the feature looks best. Some jumps, based off the terrain they are built in are limited and might only look good from one side. Others have multiple angles, and one isn’t necessarily better than another.
Behind the Scenes: Backlighting with a Flash
Ben Poechman had a spot in mind he wanted to hit. He had been there a few days before and set it up, but just needed to wait for it to snow for the landing to get soft. When he reached out to me he said the feature was right at the end of the forest. This was my first day back shooting snowboarding of the 2020/2021 season and while I hadn’t shot snowboarding with strobes in a while I knew I wanted to do that for this image. The feature was close to a chairlift so it took away some of the difficulty of the logistics of hauling all the gear.
2022 Calendar
I’ve released my 2022 calendar. Calendars can be ordered here.
It features 12 months of landscape images all capture in British Columbia, Canada.