Related posts:

1. Tremor
2. I’ve been busy…
3. Coastal Summer

It’s been almost a year since I managed to steal third prize in Whistler Blackcomb’s Deep Winter Photo Challenge. Today, I was out on the mountain scouting some stuff with Jussi Grznar, who is making his own run for the title of “King of Storms” next week, bringing back all kinds of wonderful memories like shooting in such heavy snowfall that my camera completely iced over. Or, sitting in the Glacier Creek bathroom for an hour trying to de-fog my lenses with a hand dryer (a more detailed re-cap here).

Would I do it again? Hell yes. I live for Whistler’s storm season. In the meantime, enjoy my 2011 slideshow, and get your tickets for this year’s event before it sells out. January 14 @ the Fairmont. See you there.

Related posts:

1. Deep Winter 2011 Recap
2. Deep Winter Photo Challenge – Pregame discussion
3. A week of winter, pt 4

While my friends in Utah are still suffering from the early season doldrums, winter is back in full force in the Whistler area, providing badly needed powder for the Christmas vacation crowd and snow-starved locals. A combination of factors has led to the establishment of an uncharacteristically unstable coastal snowpack, making the new snowfall a maddening exercise in patience and restraint, as everyone is chomping at the bit to get out and into the gnar. Two BC skiers succumbed to injuries sustained after being caught in avalanches this week, a sobering reminder of the dangers that exist within our mountains.

Wanting to escape the holiday crowds at Whistler, but leery of the heightened avalanche risk, I headed out to a pillow zone off the Duffey Lake Road with the Surface Skis crew on a greybird photo / video mission. The lack of snowfall has left me with very little to shoot over the last month, and I was eager to get out for the first ‘work’ day of the season. The light was flat, but the snow was excellent and pillows well-developed, with plenty of protected stashes hiding in the forested shoulder of Joffre Mountain. Just another day in paradise…

Condolences to the friends and families of the two skiers that died doing what they love. May the powder be plentiful in the afterlife.

Related posts:

1. Joffre touring
2. Tremor
3. Deep Winter 2011 Recap

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with NuuLife on their entry, a piece that showcased Whistler and the surrounding backcountry through the eyes of 4 local photographer: myself, Mike Helfrich, Kieran Brownie, and Mike Jones. I took the crew on a splitboard attempt of the Spearhead Travese – whiteout conditions halted us between Decker and Trorey, forcing us to hunker down there for the night and retreat back to Blackcomb the next day. We regrouped, lightened our packs and spent a full day filming and shooting in far better conditions around Joffre Lakes. You can see from John’s pole cam shot in the edit just how good Heartstrings was…

All of the crews put together incredible and diverse entries, particularly Voleurz and Dendrite. I thought our entry had a good shot at winning but the judges awarded the $15,000 to Voleurz.

NuuLife Cinema’s entry, “Relatively Unknown”

A couple photos from our poor visibility splitboard missions:

and the winning submission from Voleurz:

Needless to say, Intersection was a HUGE success and will be a marquee event of the festival for years to come.

Related posts:

1. Record Breaker
2. Deep Winter Photo Challenge – Pregame discussion
3. Deep Winter

It’s snowing again, hard. I’ll try to write some stories when the snow stops falling.

Related posts:

1. A little help?
2. Deep Winter Photo Challenge – Pregame discussion
3. Off and On

The idea behind the Deep Winter Photo Challenge is to showcase Whistler in it’s true element: the epic January storm cycle. Everyone loves bluebird shots of a skier making perfect turns on a dream line, but Whistler isn’t the kind of mountain where it storms overnight and is bluebird the next day. When we get hit, we get hit – hard. January is typically one massive storm, where locals see the sun about 5% of the time. Not that anyone here minds; we live for these monster storms, and spend our sunny summers yearning for a return to day after day of low visibility and endless pow. The goal of Deep Winter is to document these January days that exemplify the riding experience at Whistler Blackcomb.

For the challenge, I selected a mixed team of skiers and boarders – I ride and shoot with skiers all the time, so it seemed wrong to leave that out of my slideshow. My riders were not only talented athletes, but some of my best friends: skiers Eliel Hindert, Jake Cohn, and Liam Casey, along with snowboarders Braden Dean, Eric Poulin, and Alex Filler. Possibly the best thing about Deep Winter was that it was a contest that allowed us to do what we would have anyways – lap trees, share laughs, and explore our mountains.

Shooting Deep Winter presented a great deal of challenges – predicted and unforseen. It’s always difficult keeping pace with athletes, let alone doing it with a 35 pound camera bag strapped to your back. It gets interesting billygoating around the big cliffs that my riders like to send and, sometimes, you have no option but to drop too – with thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment along for the ride. Sometimes shots that everyone puts a lot of effort into just don’t work – maybe sometime I’ll post my clunker list. My slideshow consisted of 60 images, whittled down from 1600. Most of those 1600 suck.

The environment is always a factor when you shoot snow, but Deep Winter was another level of frustration. It was great to get new snow every day for the comp, but I could’ve done without the wet snow coating my camera and turning to ice, the constant lens wiping or worse – having every element on all of my lenses coated in fog (that prompted a trip to the bathroom hand dryers and took an hour to fix). Thankfully though, just when it seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, it didn’t. It was as if every day had a series of major obstacles for us to overcome before we were allowed to get shots.

It was such an honour to have my name alongside guys like Blake, Tim and Scarth – and while I figured Robin and Ilja were good, I didn’t really have a feel for their talent until after I’d seen their slideshows. Standing on stage with the rest of the photographers, one thing was very clear to me: this was the strongest field of competition I’d witnessed at the Deep Winter Photo Challenge, and it was a pleasure to watch everyone’s unique style and vision unfold on the big screen that night. Robin and Blake were clearly a class above, so that third place announcement was the only one that carried any real suspense. Hearing my name called – ahead of 2 guys I’ve looked up to since I started shooting snowboarding – was a blur of excitement and relief.

One thing I’ve heard mentioned a couple times since the show is that snowboarding doesn’t really seem to lend itself to the Deep Winter format. Jordan‘s slideshows have featured a snowboarder in the past, but a snowboarding photographer has never won the contest. Perhaps the shred world is too sled-dependent, while skiers are more used to booting and touring around the mountain? Food for thought, anyways.

I need to give a huge thank you to Ryan Proctor and the Whistler Blackcomb PR team for giving me the chance to compete in the Deep Winter Photo Challenge – my whole team had an incredible time trying to capture what makes Whistler such a special place. Also owed thanks are Ryan Regehr for helping me edit my slideshow and filming behind the scenes footage for Unofficial Networks, all the other photographers for inspiring me over the years and putting on an incredible show on Saturday night, and my beautiful girlfriend Alix for putting up with the days I spend glued to my computer editing or out shooting for 18 hours. I love you.

Enough talk, here’s a look at some fun and behind the scenes shots from the contest that didn’t make my slideshow. Enjoy.

Related posts:

1. Deep Winter 2011 Slideshow
2. Deep Winter Photo Challenge – Pregame discussion
3. Deep Winter

As fate would have it, Manley has graciously decided to give someone else a shot at the top prize this year, and I jumped on the opportunity to be a part of the Deep Winter experience. Despite this, the competition is intimidating: Blake Jorgenson and Tim Zimmerman (so badass that he doesn’t even need a website) are top names in the ski and snowboard worlds, John Scarth is the photo editor of Snowboard Canada Magazine, and while I’m not all that familiar with ski photogs Ilja Herb and Robin O’Neill, I’m sure they’ll have a thing or two to say about my bid for a share of a $6000 prize purse.

For those unfamiliar with the contest, photographers have 3 days to shoot in-bounds at Whistler Blackcomb followed by a day to put together a 3-5 minute slideshow, presented and judged live before an audience of 1000. 1st place takes home $3000 in prize money and is crowned the “King of Storms”.

The slideshow presentation runs Jan 15th this year. Get your tix ASAP – this event sells out well in advance every year. Needless to say, I’m thrilled and honoured to be one of the competitors and I’m really looking forward to see what the collective minds of the photographers and our teams are able to produce during the 72 hour shooting window. I’ll be posting blog updates before, during, and after the contest – next up, an introduction to my team of athletes. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Deep Winter 2011 Recap
2. A little help?
3. Deep Winter

On the other hand, being able to share with friends the world beyond highway viewpoints and resort chairlifts is a special experience, and one of the reasons I began shooting photos in the first place. And, no matter how much I complain about working for free or not having a helicopter to ferry me around, I can’t go for more than a couple days in civilization without feeling the urge to get out and go up.

On Wednesday afternoon I headed up with the Wedgemount Lake trail with Eric and Alix to spend a much needed night in the alpine. The weather was cold but clear – perfect fall hiking conditions. I apparently wasted far too many frames on long exposures Wednesday night, as my camera battery was dead by 830pm, and had to settle for iPhone photography during our Thursday hike around the glacier. Note to self: bring spare batteries next time.

A couple other photos from the hike up:

Next time I’m up I’ll have to stay for a few nights and bag some of the many surrounding summits. Might have to wait until next summer though, as the next time I’m out hiking for pleasure, I’ll probably be on a splitboard…

For comparison: some photos of Wedgemount Lake / Glacier from August 1977.

Related posts:

1. Wedgemount Lake, 2008
2. Long Summer Days
3. Atlin, BC – my summer home.

Here’s a photo from 2008 – this will be joining the photo from my last post on the walls of the Blackbird Bakery sometime next week.

Related posts:

1. Wedgemount Lake, 2010
2. So much for photo-a-day…
3. A little help?

Out of the Shadows Trailer – 2010 HD Ski Film by Dendrite Studios from Dendrite Studios on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Dendrite Studios – Perspectives
2. Intersection
3. Whats in the Fridge? teaser