Update: The Project

In January I went down to Park City for the Slamdance film festival to watch the world premiere of The Project. The trip turned out to be a blast and the movie ended up great. It even won the viewers choice award. Well anyway, they have put up the official website. It can be seen here. Check it out, most all the stills were shot by yours truly.

Bonfire Jump

For the past 2 years, friends of mine have put together a party to summon snow from mother nature. This year, they had Teton Brewery pro rate some beer and built a bonfire over a jump. Plenty of people showed, and also a few good snowboarders and skiers. I shot this party last year, but was rushed and didn't get the results I truly wanted. This year, with the help of a little information from Strobist, I was able to pull off some pretty cool shots. To make these images, I set up 2 off camera strobes diagonal from each other. Kept walking around and shot the skiers and snowboards from different vantage points around the jump. Here is one image, but I will be posting more here under the winter catagory.

Natural Selection Snowboard Comp

Normally, I am assigned to super boring stories for the paper. My typical subjects are people who don't have time for me and have no interest in looking good. So far I have had a few exceptions and my latest assignment was one of the cooler ones. I traveled over Teton Pass to visit artist Ryan Haworth in Victor, Idaho. Ryan is a long time friend of Travis Rice a local professional snowboarder. Travis asked Ryan to design the trophies for his inaugural Natural Selection snowboard competition that will take place at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort next week. Pictured is Ryan painting one of the buffalo skulls that will be used for the trophies. I had a great time working with Ryan and hope to make it back to shoot the final product. More on the comp and related news in the coming week!

Think snow...

The Project- Update

This past week I went down to Park City, Utah to visit Renart Films and to see the world premier of The Project at the Slamdance Film Festival. To my surprise, the showing was completely sold out and was a complete success. Now, I am not saying this just because I was a part of this film. After the showing there was quite a buzz about it.

For those who are unfamiliar, Slamdance is a film festival based around an anarchist theme. Even cooler, the festival is going green and had many green sponsers. It's pretty cool to see a film festival committed to reducing it's carbon footprint and should be overlooked by no one.

Check out the links and get a quick glimps into the movie. Let me know what you think!

Indian Creek

2 weeks ago I was in Indian Creek, UT. I met up with a few friends at camp '6' for some wholesome climbing fun. I am pretty sure the entire time we didn't leave camp before 11 a.m. which doesn't lend to the greatest light, but hey, if you're tagging along, you take what you can get.

Indian Creek is located in south east UT in the middle of the desert. It is famous for the perfect cracks in the miles upon miles of rock wall, my 'models' were all about getting on tough climbs.

Climbing photography can be a bit of a head trip. First, you have to 'jumar' a fixed rope, clip your bag to the system and shoot away. The scare for me is potentially dropping an expensive lens/camera body. I suppose to get a decent shot you have to take a risk. Luckily, I didn't drop anything this day or the entire trip for that matter.

For this particular shot, I was hanging at about 90 feet shooting down on Leif. Snapped a bunch of frames, then rappelled off the climb. I have a bunch more, and some of my other Indian Creek work can be seen here.

A month later...

Well it's been roughly a month since my last post. As you can guess, I've been quite busy as of late. Two weeks ago I took part in a photography workshop here in Jackson called Photography at the Summit. The workshop was put on by photographers Corey Rich, James Balog, Richard Clarkson, and National Geographic Adventure Magazine photo editor Sabin Meyer. Under their instruction we shot images of climbing, kayaking, camping, running, biking, and outdoor lifestyle. Above is an image I made in the Gros Ventre mountain range looking back on Grand Teton National Park. I used multiple off-camera lights, and gels to create this image.

I'd encourage everyone to investigate the work of the instructors above.

Also, I've just returned from Indian Creek Utah where I shot climbing and mountain bike images more on that next...

Play whats NOT there

One of the greatest jazz musicians Miles Davis once said, "Don't play whats there, play whats not there." This quote was brought to my attention by one of my favorite photographers and friend from Connecticut, Jake Wyman. I think this quote can be applied to photography particularly well. Don't shoot whats there, shoot whats NOT there.

Well, I decided to give it a shot. I shot this image by reversing the direction of my lens. Basically I held my lens backwards up to my camera and shot away. I used flashes shot through umbrellas to create the bright, soft light. It's pretty cool what you can do when you focus on the unknown and try something a little different.