Maybe the title of this blog entry is misleading. Monochrome if often taken to mean black and white. However it can also mean an image where there is only one colour in brighter and darker shades. A sepia image is a yellow/orange monochrome. A midday picture of the ocean and blue sky would be a blue monochrome.
Glancing at the bulk of the images from the past 3 months shows a monochrome summer of green. From the first day of the year, with Andrij footplanting a mossy boulder, to my most recent day behind the lens with Cavan and Jordan linking turns through lush north shore foliage, its all the same hue.

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Instead of being characterized by plentiful colours of the rainbow, this summer was characterized by plentiful chlorophyll, the green biomolecule that is a key player in photosynthesis.

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Here’s to cedars, moss and old man’s beard, to Saskatoon bushes, ferns and hemlock branches in the sky above, to skunk cabbage in swamps, and creeping vines on fallen trees.

Every time I pick up a camera there are two stories competing to be told. First there is the story I intend to shoot, the themes and ideas myself and an athlete set out to capture. The second is the story which actually unfolds.

About 50 weeks ago BC was on fire. Not just a little part, a whole bunch of it. The day Kyle and I got out riding there 270 wildfires burning across BC, fanned by high winds and dry weather. Alberta is downwind of BC, and Calgary was downwind of several especially bad fires, BC’s chimney stack if you will. So much so those with asthma and the elderly were warned against spending too much time outdoors. Naturally, thats where Kyle and I went. With so much smoke in the air the sun turned into a blood red ball in the western sky every evening for an hour before setting. We shot throughout the sunset, getting some great images until a little rain started and the sun tucked itself behind a blanket of clouds. A wrap for the day, right?

Given a couple minutes more, packing away our gear before heading home it took a 180 degree turn to realize the picture of the day was actually in the opposite direction. Though the sun had disappeared from our view, the massive thunderhead developing in the East was still being struck my the sun’s increasingly fire-like rays. Kyle got back on the bike, and I got back behind the camera capturing this image, which now is printed on the concluding page of Bike Magazine’s Photo Annual.

Several weeks earlier I had been shooting on Vancouver Island with Sam, an up and coming racer from Victoria. In the same way we found ourself shooting, chasing shots of gloomy mist moving in and out of the hills and among arbutus trees slick with rain. As I moved through the brush beside the trail it became clear the pictures weren’t going to be of the low lying clouds in the branches of trees around us, but rather the plethora of spider webs around my knees.
Its easy to set out over planned to create a certain story or achieve a certain goal when there is an amazing story begging to be told. Its right infront of your face, just take a moment to reverse your perspective.

Welcome to the circus, an annual celebration of freakishly dangerous acts, bicycle celebrations, and debauchery. Whistler has fine tuned it’s ability to collectively revolt against the monotony and enslaving routine life all too often offers. Between the World Ski Snowboard Festival and Crankworx this little town in a coastal valley in BC has developed an uncanny skill for festivals which leave every resident and visitor with a hangover from a 10 day binge on bikes, music, contests, races, and maybe a little bit of partying.
This is photographic evidence left behind by the Crankworx I had this year; the events, action, crowds, and emotion of the annual circus of bikes.

August 2011 Wallpapers
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(29 Photos)

-Continuation of yesterday’s blog: Biking on Snow and Skiing on Dirt

In late March I spent a week in the Whistler-Pemberton area shooting with a number of different athletes. Over the week the average daily snowfall was over 20cm. From day to day every line on every mountain we skied filled in and transformed from one other worldly shape to another. Like sand shifting on dunes, the lanscape morphed as time passed. One of the daily missions we embarked on was to the north of Pemberton up the Hurley pass to ski ‘mini-golf’ lines. (Hike-ski repeat on short zones of cliffs spines etc.)

July 6th: North America is nursing it’s hangover from a weekend of Canada/America Day festivities, businessmen are back in offices longing for their week retreat to a beach. Four months after I battled through waist deep powdery bliss I find myself slathering copious amounts of suntan lotion on my all-too-white arms, only a stones throw away from the spot we shot the image above. Skis, poles, boots and skins litter the ground as we gaze through the trees at the patchy remnants of winter littering forest floor.

Everything about that moment was as backwards as it could be compared to the last time I stood in that valley. +20, blue skies, non-existant avalanche danger, sunscreen, sweat in the eyes, sun glasses and a T shirt. Compared to goggles, thermal layers, toe warmers, overcast, puking snow, wind, avalanche pit digging, slednecks within earshot. Ski touring is ski touring, its incredibly fun, tiring, solitary, and methodical but the experience couldn’t have felt more absurdly different.