Though the snow wasn’t luxurious, the light on Wednesday made up for it. In these short winter months the sun stays low on the horizon all day, illuminating beautiful texture and detail. The first day of the competition was nearly cloudless, and with the snow de-grading over the course of the week, most of the action for my slideshow was captured in the first 8 hours of the competition.

Dave, Dan and myself worked to tell a story that resonates between the three of us, and among all snow enthusiasts. A story of an athlete’s journey through the injury-rehab process, and the depression and stresses that come as that story plays out in our friendships.

Our efforts garnered 3rd place overall, as well as the title Best [Image] In Show.

Deep Winter Links:
-Online voting for People’s Choice (Send me heliskiing, and you can also win)
-Pre-Event interview with the Whistler Question, highlighting that I’m the youngest ever to compete in Deep Winter
-Dave Treadway being interviewed by DogLotion.com
-Event recap by Whistler Is Awesome
-ESPN with some of my words, and some of my images

That smell is in the air, the chilled breeze bites at my neck whispers of the colder times to come.

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.

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.

Wrangle the Shoot is an annual photography competition in Golden BC hosted by Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. Photographers start shooting at noon and have to shoot, edit, print, and present five images by 7pm. Another twist; instead of heading out and shooting with riders you have control over you’re hopping around the hill predicting, reacting, and sniping skiers competing in Wrangle the Chute

-Same shot as above, cropped so you can better see Logan sending it.-

As a ski photographer this format is quite difficult for capturing images, its like taking a seasoned jockey and putting him on a horse he’s never ridden, and then telling him he has to race. Every other day ‘in the office’ I get to carefully orchestrate every image, coordinating with the rider giving him or her specific details about how they should ski a specific feature. In regular shooting a rider skiing accuracy by a foot or two off the agreed line is crucial to the success of a shot. But this weekend riders could be dropping, turning, jumping and falling on a zone 3 ridges wide and several hundred feet tall.

These images won me ‘Best Photographer Overall’ in Wrangle the Shoot 2011

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.

Don’t get me wrong, we all love doing it, but is there maybe too much of a good thing?

What about all those people who say ‘quality over quantity’? Must just be a cover up for people who don’t do it all the time for whatever reason. Or are they onto something? It’s not difficult to do it all the time if you have no standards.

I think we can all agree we have seen a lot of ‘McPictures’; high volume, low quality imagery. Often excessively processed because the original ‘creative ingredients’ weren’t good in the first place.
‘Too much’ is every time the act hasn’t been contemplated. ‘Too quick’ is every time details are ignored; ‘Oh i can fix that in PS’

Many now say best camera is the one thats with you, but more importantly the best pictures are the ones taken with purpose, intent, and forethought.

I’ll take a stand for what I believe; quality of quantity, wait for the right one at the right moment before you commit. Take time every time you do it, if its rushed it’ll never be as good.