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.

Shooting bikes in Whistler has an interesting twist right now, normally the elements a mtb photographer in whistler gets to work with include: dry or tacky dirt, warm weather, and dialed trails. La Nina’s effect was so severe on the Coast of BC the Whistler trail crew has been digging snow rather than building an maintaining trails. In places you’re riding between banks of snow, in others you’re traversing mud pits axel deep, reminiscent of the West Coast Trail.

But its more than funky riding conditions, it is a key element of the definition of biking. Exploration, uncertainty, adaptability and a flowing evolution of the landscape we travel through. A deep snow pack in one year isn’t an oddity, it would be much more absurd to see identical conditions from week to week, year to year.

Tomorrow: Skiing on Dirt

Over the past year I’ve been shooting a lot with Alison Law from Studio A Interiors , photographing her interior design portfolio for her website. This specific project was a special treat as Alberta Home Magazine picked up the story of the interior renovation, and ran a feature article in their April issue.

On the photographer’s side of things there was some special challenges, namely including people in some of the imagery. Alison and I agreed it would be a great image to have an image of the home owner’s children in one of the shots. Photographing children and interior design are two incredibly polar opposite types of photography, and capturing both in one image at once proved to be an interesting challenge. When photographing interior design you have quite a bit of flexibility concerning when you take the shot, things don’t move very fast. Children however, have split second unpredictable photogenic moments, and a very short amount of time they’ll be happy working ‘on set’. After a fair bit of coordination with all the adults we had on hand, we managed to get the first image of the little master baker in his element. At the end of the shoot we even had the opportunity to sample some of his creations.

If you’re in Alberta in April, you can find Alberta Home on the magazine rack, the article ‘Forever Home’ is on page 41

About two years ago I stretched my ACL after my tibia popped out of place. A month later after doing the Hospital->Physio->Rehab thing I didn’t have a more stable knee, due to a mis-diagnosis. A slip on ice in Whistler put a major ‘bucket handle’ tear in my meniscus. A year later I had surgery, and after several months of physic I was as close to normal as I’ll ever be, even though it’ll never be as good as it was before.

I went almost 23 months without skiing, and at least 14 months without riding a mountain bike freely. Even though it was a doctor that failed to prevent the major tears in my knee, I really blame myself for a whole series of unfortunate events that could have been avoided if I had simply been smart about caring for myself to stay in the game. Leading up the the first injury I had completely neglected the overall muscular balance, stability, and health of my body. Sleeping on a futon mattress for six months, walking several kilometers daily in poor shoes with a heavy/poorly fitting camera bag, and little exercise other than mountain biking and skiing without properly stretching or training.

So from the guy who did it all wrong, don’t do it wrong like me. As a ski photographer its not very lucrative to be banned from skiing for 2 years, as a person its not very inspiring to be restricted from enjoying the passions you love so much, and as a business its not a great situation to be unable to generate new products. So; don’t do it wrong like me.

So, how does one do it right?
Preventative Maintenance: work to develop a strong, but balanced body. I’ve been working on this through Yoga, Jogging, and Weight Lifting.
Yoga: It does a great job of finding and correcting issues with flexibility and muscular/ligament strength and balance. A great benefit of being more flexible; when you fall, twist, or get bumped your body can absorb more of the impact by flexing and stretching without tearing, which proves very handy as a ski photographer.
Jogging: Developing your Cardio and strength jogging helps last the full day shooting in the backcountry without fading. It also does a bunch of other great things like increasing life span.
Weights: I’m not as concerned personally with lifting weights (insert joke about lanky skinny tall white boy here) However I still do lift weights to help maintain strength, which comes in handy when you head out and ski several thousand feet with a bunch of cameras and lenes on your back.

Quality footwear, sleep, and Camera bag.
Quality footwear is pretty simple: if you’re shooting in flip-flops you’re probably doing it wrong. Look for well supported shoes with quality grip so you don’t slip.
Sleep: If you wake up daily with kinks in your back theres something wrong, you’re developing back issues while you dream. Again, look for good support. You’ll know when its working.
Camera Bag: Look for a bag that looks more like a hiking pack than a camera bag. Run of the mill camera bags are often boxy, don’t draw the weight close to your body, and don’t offer the straps and clips necessary to distribute the weight, and control movement effectively. Well designed bags cary most of the weight in the hips, if you have sore shoulders after a day of shooting you’re dealing with a crappy bag, or your bag needs to be re-adjusted. Currently I work with a bag called the href="http://fstopgear.com/en/product/mountain/loka">Loka made my the company F-Stop. Click to check it out

I good friend of mine, Kevin White, is a chiropractor in Victoria (ph 250 743 3775), and I asked him for his tips on staying healthy -and consequently out of his office!

1. Packing your Bag – Pack heavy things closer to your body, and the heaviest closest to your waistline (most ego dynamic efficient carrying place).
2. Bag Type: Avoid bags with only one strap/sling such as satchel or messenger bags. Since you need to often hold a heavy camera and have steady hands, use bags that have 2 shoulder straps and preferably chest and waist straps. This takes load off your neck and shoulder and places it across your chest and waist, making it easier to shoot and reduces fatigue. If you only have a shoulder bag, wear it across your chest for the same reason.
3. Strap Padding: look for bags with padded straps to prevent neck and shoulder injury.
4. Plan ahead for heat/cold and for water and food needed. Its hard to press buttons when your fingers are frozen. Staying warm especially around you neck, shoulders and wrists/hands can prevent injury from the elements, uncoordinated movements and joint/muscle tightening. Plain water and simple packable foods like nuts, dried fruit is best if you’re active for over 1.5hrs. Don’t forget this for your subjects either!
5. Start Slow if you have a long trek to your location: stretching cold before is a waste of time and can actually put you at higher risk of injury during exercise. just warm up into any activity.
6. During shooting if you start to develop a “kink” from holding a position try and shake it out immediately. The longer you maintain stressful positions the more compensations your body develops and the more likely its going to become an issue… “If you keep making that face, its gonna stay that way”. Shaking out only takes a second to do and you can go back to the original position to continue shooting. Think about carrying heavy shopping bags and the burn you get in your shoulders…you shake it out and you can go another block before its an issue again.

7. Stretch after focusing on fingers, wrists, arms, neck and shoulders.
8 Lift properly: you’ve heard it before, but don’t underestimate how important it is. Lift with your legs, not your back. Make sure when you lift your camera bag, its the closest you can get it to your center of gravity before trying to move it. Bend at your knees and tighten your core to help protect your back.
Most know the basics of lifting with your legs, but doing a scissor stance with one knee dropped creates a rotation through the pelvis which also reduces lumbar strain while lifting and moving things.
9: While taking pictures: When you are in position but need to move the camera to adjust the height or move laterally – try and think about moving your sternum(chest) to point in that direction rather than wrenching your neck, hunching. Think about a soldier shooting a gun. For best accuracy they keep the angles between the rifle and their shoulders somewhat constant and pivot from the waist/sternum to aim. Don’t hunch into the camera or lurch your head forward, instead relax your shoulders down and back, drop your elbows and bring your ears closer above your shoulders. This reduces neck and shoulder strain.

Note I’m not a physiotherapist, personal trainer, or chiropractor. This is what I’ve learned works for me, not absolute truth.

And, every skier will be wishing they were six months back; in the middle of an amazing ski season.

As a Canadian the words from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi come to mind: “Don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” Though she wasn’t singing about skiers’ separation anxiety from fluffy white snow, the phrase sure as hell applies.

This is it; the sport we love in the peak of it’s season. It doesn’t get any better than looking out my window to see blue skies, while checking the forecast seeing another storm rolling in to pummel the mountains.

So; take a moment to appreciate and cherish it, before it’s gone.

Working as a photographer you get to walk the fine line between chaos and order. Taking time to plan in advance to eliminate risks and unknowns, while embracing the chaos that creative work thrives in, and the not so predictable worlds of Skiing and Mountain Biking. The Banff Photographer Shootout epitomized the conflicting worlds of (dis)organization in the life of a ski photographer.

A little background on the event: this was the first year of the Banff Photographer Shootout, a competition where you have 7 days to shoot, edit, and create a slideshow, which is then pitted against 5 other photographers. (Same idea as Deep Summer/Deep Winter in Whistler)

24 Hours before the competition started: Every rider, assistant, location, carefully planned out to work efficiently with people I wanted to, in the places I wanted to. Itinerary set. Then:
-35 wind chill in Calgary
The worst avalanche conditions in 30 years.
Highway closures adding hundreds of kilometers and many hours to traveling times.
Equipment acting unpredictably from extremely variable temperatures and humidity levels.
Riders getting injured.
Melting Levels near the peaks of lots of mountains.

Its events like the Banff Shootout that remind you, no matter how well you have a shoot organized, a team’s ability to act spontaneously, and create innovative solutions on short notice proves to be more valuable. Through all the madness my team of athletes managed to pull off some great work, and our slideshow won the event. Although I’m the one behind the lens pushing the button, the creativity, positive attitude, and skill of each of the athletes determined our success.

More pictures from the slideshow night, and some of the competing photographer’s slideshows Click here

The last week has i’ve been doing the gypsy transient skier thing; living in a van, hopping resorts, bagging turns, and making images. If you aren’t following me on twitter you might not have known, other than the absence of blogging. Over the last week I’ve found myself on couches and in parking lots in Revelstoke, Abbotsford (to ski at Mt. Baker), Victoria, and finally Whistler before a night drive back to home, warmth, and a real mattress in Calgary.

Other than a single day skiing some impressively deep snow in Fernie, this trip was my triumphant return to the winter wonderland we have the privilege to engage in and play with. Suiting I found myself living a bit of a ski bum dream; chasing snow around the province, embracing mother nature’s chilly side, and most of all sharing the experience with great passionate people.

For any culture to develop vibrantly there are some key ingredients; the activity and ideas people identify with, the environment within which they interact, and the people themselves. We’ve all heard and talked to much about the sport we call ours, and the mountains we get to play among, but for me on this trip it was the people who made the impression. Passionate people.
All the Writers, Photographers, Skiers, and Snowboarders, and that guy who sent the burly line. -Of course there was the one snowboarder taking his perceived superiority too seriously as he hurled obscenities at me, but he’ll always be there so stop worrying about him.- Thank you to everyone in our sport, for your dedication to the people, environment, progression and movement. This trip, every trip, and every day I have the opportunity to share with you is a privilege.

So here, for you, oh weak frail Canadian. From warmer times, happier days, and better seasons: remember with me those idealized days of summer on boats under the sun.

Matt after crashing straight to kidneys off a huge Raily

Several months ago I was contacted by Ian (below) from the Aidrie based band To Die For. They were looking for some new promo images, but didn’t really know what type. The key point was that the group really had to be different; something you don’t see every day. On some projects you can look around for inspiration; finding some feature in other people’s work to generate images with a slightly different approach. But for TDF the main instruction I was given ruled out that type of creative process.
Instead I took a look at the types of images I look forward, think about, and work on the most. They are often quite technical in nature, and take different photographic techniques from different genres of photography. The end result is above: star trail/long exposure shots which are usually done with landscapes married with portraiture.

I also got called in by Fall City Fall, a great Calgary band who I’ve had the pleasure to work with many times before. This time the band gave me almost 100% creative control which was great, however intimidating. You have no idea if they have hidden expectations of any sort, and if you are aligning with what they’re secretly hoping to get. We shot just outside their jam space which backs onto an industrial area of town, the industrial card has been played many times before in band photography. But with a couple tweaks of perspective and lighting the product is a new take on a classic theme.