2013 Deep Winter Photo Challenge

Last month I was confirmed as 1 of 6 pro photographers invited to shoot in the “Deep Winter Photo Challenge” that took place this past week within the boundaries of the resort. Shooting began on January 12, 2013 and ended on the 14. The teams of athletes, editors and photographers then put together a slideshow presentation of 3-5 minutes to a frenzied powder hunger audience of 1300 at the Fairmont Chateau in Whistler. The event had a panel of judges that scored the show on Technical/Composition, Originality/Creativity, Theme and overall presentation.

A few of the photographers present have done similar shows in the summer time or other resorts and most had a solid game plan coming into the event. Over the past few weeks I had been brainstorming for a theme and asked a trio of rippers known as the Raging Cajuns. I met this crew over 12 yrs ago at the ski show when they had just moved out from New Brunswick.

They quickly put their stamp on both mountains skiing unlikely lines and living the Quintessential skiers dream. The Cajuns are known as: 

Dominic Melanson

 Kris Cormier

 Matty Richard

 I’ve shot with them on and off and I was always fired up to see the energy and commitment they put into skiing.

Over the years their commitment to the mountains never changed, but they all started to find their schedules were a little more hectic so the Cajuns didn’t ski together as much. I had the feeling they were stoked to devote 3 day’s of shooting and continue the Cajun tradition. We did some location scouting together and developed a plan with considerations for deteriorating snow pack and the inversion locked in. 
Day 1. We started off high in the alpine as I felt the zones that only received morning light would still hold blower powder. That ended up being a super productive day and we only ended up recylcling the lifts 1 time. 
Day 2. we had a solid look at where the trees’s were holding snow as the inversion damaged the alpine so we searched closer to the valley bottom.  We then followed instinct to find an amazing north facing pillow zone but had to keep in mind the shallow snowpack and probe landing zones for Pungy’s. We eneded the day in the alpine searching out the magical hour of light and nailed some great shots in an unlikely zone- I gotta thank the upslope winds for adding drama to the images. 
Day 3. we reviewed some missing items to complete the slideshow and ended the day a bit early on the mountain to hit some studio style shots.

My friend David Pearson arrived at my hotel and promptly started the edit for the presentation. 
www.designhousecollective.com
https://vimeo.com/45591691

David is a genius and it was amazing watching the images unfold into the best story he could pull out of the stock we collected over the day’s. He worked well into the night and we completed the show with about an hour to spare on the deadline. The only thing left now was to show up onstage for the 8pm screening and share our experiences from the previous day’s with the judges and capacity crowd. I drew the number 1 seat so my show ran 1st. Anxiety and apprehension were running a little high but it was great to see it all unfold on screen and felt I had a solid show. Before we knew it all the slideshows had ran and we were all lined up waiting for the deliberation.

All the shows took it to the next level in creativity. My feeling was I might be 2nd or 3rd but in the end I ended up out of the top 3. Looking back I feel I nailed it with the action imagery but from a storytelling perspective I think I needed to break up the action a bit in the middle and connect the Cajuns brotherhood to the audience and judges. Missed it by that much ☺ Here is my show- Enjoy. 


https://vimeo.com/57809296

Assistants-
Julie Tennock - supporting partner through all my photo obsessions !
Dan Stein

Thanks to MEC
http://www.mec.ca/Main/home.jsp
Intuition Liners 
https://intuitionliners.com
Ryder Eyewear
http://ryderseyewear.com/
Dynafit
http://www.dynafit.com

Congrats to the Photographers for inspiring:  
Russel Dalby 
Andrew Strain 
Rueben Krabbe 
Mike Helfrich 
Nic Alegre 
thanks to the sponsors:-
Whistler Blackcomb- Arcteryx -Gore-Tex- GoPro

The Following day my good friend and I Michael Horst went up into Garibaldi Park and skied off the summit of Garibaldi.. It was refreshing to lay down some turns on bullet proof ice above a huge Bergshrund ! Sometimes nothing else matters except the next turn :)
Happy Adventures..