A Whistler Man - A Morning Paddle Boarding
Adventure Photography, Photo Essay Ben Girardi Adventure Photography, Photo Essay Ben Girardi

A Whistler Man - A Morning Paddle Boarding

Motivation can be difficult to find sometimes. On certain days I go out and the conditions aren’t ideal, and if I’m shooting work on spec I find myself leaving my camera in the bag and not shooting much. While I don’t think there is anything wrong with this, I’ve wanted to try and add some motivation to my shooting to make myself more engage and find the story in each day out. After something I recently heard I’ve been challenging myself to create a simple story before I even head out shooting to give myself a direction to shoot towards.

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Winter 2020 Highlights

Winter 2020 Highlights

2020 was an interesting winter. In British Columbia, the season came late with hardly any snowfall in December and ended earlier than expected with restrictions being put in place. However, there was still plenty of time to get after it. I’ve put together this slideshow to share my snowboarding work from 2020. Some of the images made it to print in various magazines, others have been used online, and some haven’t been seen at all.

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Photo Gallery: Out for a Paddle
Adventure Photography, Photo Gallery Ben Girardi Adventure Photography, Photo Gallery Ben Girardi

Photo Gallery: Out for a Paddle

I’m always trying to keep my eye out for a canoe, regularly checking buy and sell pages and Craigslist to see what is available. The right one is yet to come along, but I know it will eventually. While I would say I’m far from a regular on the water, some of my earliest memories are from boats. From learning to sail my parent’s Laser, to going on canoe trips at Boy Scout camp, to taking my dad’s Adirondack Guideboat for long rows on the Finger Lakes of New York. To now owning paddleboards and using them to explore the many lakes around British Columbia. I love the ability a boat offers to switch up the perspective and look at the shoreline and provide the freedom to glide into every nook and cranny and see what is there.

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Behind the Scenes: Out for a Weekend Adventure
Behind the Scenes Ben Girardi Behind the Scenes Ben Girardi

Behind the Scenes: Out for a Weekend Adventure

When getting out for this sunrise I had a specific shot in mind I wanted to shoot. Not to long ago, I shot a sunrise image in the fall. Later that spring, a massive landslide on Joffre Peak took off half the face of the mountain, altering the mountains look. While the peak was only a small element in the photo, I wanted to shoot the same landscape and show the difference between before and after. We got there just in time for sunrise, I set up my tripod and got the shot I was after.

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Instant Regret
Adventure Photography, Photo Essay Ben Girardi Adventure Photography, Photo Essay Ben Girardi

Instant Regret

Josh and I had been trying to get out for a while. We kept throwing ideas around of places we wanted to go but never were able to make any of them happen. Finally, a day lined up, but the weather was looking rainy. We figured big vistas weren’t on the future agenda of our hike so we decided to go to a cabin. After some research, we realized the initial cabin we planned to go to was boarded up due to Covid. Another option we thought of was a cabin neither of us had ever been to before. I’ve heard it mentioned by friends in the past asking if I’d ever been there, but have never had the chance. We did some pre-trip research finding as much info as possible. I’m a pretty frequent user of Google Earth so once I had a general idea of where it was I was able to zoom in and find the exact spot of the cabin and plot a route. I’m not personally a huge fan of sharing locations, (I wrote about my thoughts on that here) so wasn’t surprised that I had to do a bit of leg work to find some info.

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The Mysterious Whistle
Adventure Photography Ben Girardi Adventure Photography Ben Girardi

The Mysterious Whistle

Sounds are unnerving, especially when you don’t know what they are. That odd noise from your car when driving down the highway. A weird crack or pop from your body you weren’t expecting when you move in a certain way. Maybe the scariest and most unnerving of them all, an unknown sound in the backcountry. It can really put me on edge and make my hyper-aware of my surroundings.

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Behind the Scenes: Bear, Raven and a bit of Luck.
Behind the Scenes Ben Girardi Behind the Scenes Ben Girardi

Behind the Scenes: Bear, Raven and a bit of Luck.

When shooting you can plan all you want, but sometimes everything comes down to luck. Getting this exact framing depends almost entirely on luck.

While in Tofino, we decided to take a day to hop on a boat and check out the shoreline from a different perspective. In doing so we came across a lot of wildlife ranging from bears to grey whales and orcas. Being on the water gave an unobstructed view, as I didn’t need to shoot through a thickly forested mountainside.

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Mini Adventure - Triangulation
Adventure Photography Ben Girardi Adventure Photography Ben Girardi

Mini Adventure - Triangulation

Not every adventure is some epic multi-day mountain ridge traverse, and I don’t think it always should be. This day was forecasted to be rainy and overcast, but we decided to get out regardless and just deal with the conditions. Not that I am in any way against hiking in the rain, it can sometimes just be harder to motivate.

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Behind the Scenes: Ice Cave

Behind the Scenes: Ice Cave

I didn’t have a particular plan to make an image in the ice cave. Ben Poechman and I planned to get out on Whistler Blackcomb on what was supposed to be a mostly sunny day. The idea was to shoot images on the giant ice blocks that fall off cornices in the spring. However, a storm came in and we were instead hanging out in a whiteout with nearly zero definition. We decided to go and check out the ice cave as it was nearby and we hadn’t been in a while.

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Behind the Scenes: S-Curves
Behind the Scenes Ben Girardi Behind the Scenes Ben Girardi

Behind the Scenes: S-Curves

When I lived Utah, anytime I was going up into the mountains to adventure, or snowboard I would drive past this spot in Big Cottonwood Canyon. I had scoped this angle when checking out a climbing location and knew I wanted to make a photograph here. It was a matter of waiting for the ideal conditions.

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Behind the Scenes: Sun Dog

Behind the Scenes: Sun Dog

This was another one of those days where we got skunked by the weather. We had some good conditions in the morning, but as we moved into the afternoon it started to cloud out with high clouds at first. Noticing this sun dog starting to be visible I knew I wanted to get a shot with the rider in front of it. We were already in a zone taking some fun laps that had a slope that lined up reasonably well. I wanted the sun dog to intercept the slope so the rider appeared in the middle.

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Trail Running

Trail Running

Overall I live a generally active lifestyle, from getting out snowboarding, to hiking in the mountains, to even just biking around town. While not all overly physically demanding they keep me in decent shape. One thing I have always struggled with though is doing a regular exercise routine. This is fine in the middle of winter when I’m getting out nearly every day. But there are times when I find myself on the computer for days on end, editing photos, and realize I haven’t done anything physical. Normally this happens in the spring when I’m trying to finish up all my imagery from the winter, and in the fall when it starts getting rainy.

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