We got the call less than a week before Xmas that Red Bull athlete Levi LaVallee was working on a top secret new trick for X Games at his home in Longville, MN and they wanted us to shoot it. It took a bit of schedule fanangling but we decided we could make it happen.
It was a long truck to get up to the small town (pop. 180) of Longville but once we were there we were welcomed to the compound by Levi, his RB filmer Adam Buck, and Levi’s crew of hometown friends. Through the large shop, past the muscle car, lifted truck, and wakeboard boat, is Levi’s living quarters complete with full fitness room where we hung out, edited photos, reviewed video, and played Van Damme on his punching bag.
The mountains of gear lived in the shop and all the action happened less than 100 yards away. Each morning we would wench the roof off of the foam pit, adjust the ramp, and Levi would send his mandatory warm up straight air. From there he would pretty much immediately go into working on the trick and adjusting all possible variables… bar height, ramp angle, track weight, and technicalities of his form. It was pretty amazing watching and capturing the process of learning to do something crazy that has never been done before… a lot standing around and “what if…”s. Sometimes it felt like there were way too many cooks in the kitchen but for the most part it was an interesting collaborative brainstorm session between Levi, his mechanic, his dad, his long time friends, and the random onlookers who just dropped by because they heard Levi was up to something.
Levi and his friends built the retractable roof on the foam pit themselves and found an old working logging truck to crane the sled out of the foam after each hit. It was an impressive system with just the right combination of progression and backwoods DIY.
Don’t forget to tune into Xgames snowmobile big air to check Levi out!
Last week we booked tickets for 20 people (12 athletes, 2 photographers, 2 motion guys, 3 company guys, someone from a potential account) to Calgary, drove them to Golden via packed-to-the-gills rental vehicles, loaded a school bus and took a field trip to the heli pick up, took 6 helicopter loads over a beautiful mountain lake to the snow cat pick up, and rode a snow cat into the best place on earth.
Chatter Creek Lodge is an epic log cabin build entirely from on-site lumber deep in the Canadian Rockies. They have an enormous tenure (238 square kilometres) accessed by 4 snow cats and a heli and the coolest staff in the world.
We simultaneously negotiated a deal for a Helly Hansen uniform contract for Chatter Creek and booked the annual early season winter photo shoot.
The crew killed it with Nate Abbott and Mark Gallup on stills and Pixl Family on motion behind the lenses and Mark Abma, Eric Hjorleifson, James Heim, Shin Campos, Eric Pollard, JP Solberg, Chris Davenport, PK Hunder, Lisa Filzmoser, Jessica Sobolowski, Jake Knigge, and Karine Falck-Pedersen in front.
We managed a huge shot list with a boatload of product and seem to have nailed everything we needed. We also managed to collect product feedback from the athletes and the Chatter guides and staff.
Ridiculously beautiful setting, great people, sick terrain, good snow, hot tub, good food, bar games.
We recently helped our friend Scott Markewitz with a shoot for Factory Design Labs. Their office was well designed and interesting to shoot and the entire staff was easy going and fun.
For the party Scott shot with an on camera flash and lighting modifier and we set up a “photo booth” with studio lighting and a remote trigger for people to take their own shots.
Red Bull Soapbox came to our back yard last weekend… Red Rocks Amphitheater. It was a nice change to shoot a Red Bull Photofiles event, which is usually a long demanding day, and sleep in our own beds.
One of the clients with whom we’ve enjoyed a long relationship had, on several occasions, indicated interest in setting up a beginning photography class in the Denver area for herself as well as some coworkers and friends.
This Sunday we reserved some class room space and made it happen.
The whole process was interesting, fun, and actually quite helpful. It has been over a decade since any of us took our last formal photography class and although we utilize the basic principles taught in photo 101 on an almost daily basis, they are rarely something we outwardly and consciously examine… certainly not in the depth and detail it takes to put together a curriculum and convey them to someone with little to no photographic background.
Creating the curriculum and visual presentation of the topics allowed us to reexamine on a base level what taking photos is all about.
We discussed everything from the construction and mechanics of an SLR vs. P&S, basics camera controls, details of aperture, shutter, and ISO, correctly exposing a photo, utilizing ambient light, composition, digital workflow, to considerations in buying equipment and software… etc. etc.
Everyone left with a better understanding of how to use the camera they already had, how to improve the photos they already shoot, and a renewed excitement and confidence in photography.
If anyone reading this has any interest in the presentation please say so in the comments and we can provide it as a PDF.
We recently were asked by our good friends atRed Bull to shoot the Denver premier of Travis Rice’s new movie That’s it That’s all at the Denver Performing Arts Center.
The event was done in true Red Bull style at the nicest venue we’ve ever seen host a snow sports film… just check the pictures of the venue!
The film itself was truly next level sh#$. The cinematography was nothing short of breath taking. Many of the shots were utilizing a Wescam, a helicopter mounted stabilized camera controlled from the inside of the Heli used in the Planet Earth series, providing mind blowing imagery of some of the most beautiful places on earth. And this is to say nothing of the snowboarding the likes of which I guarantee you’ve never seen before… eg.. triple flips, the biggest smoothest double corks ever, disco spins of the tops of 30′ trees, not to mention feel good group shred with Terje, Muller, and Rice.
After a couple of days in SoCal visiting the Transworld, Snowboard, and Powder offices, attending the Double Decade Mack Dawg premier at the Oakley headquarters, and playing in the surf, we headed to Philadelphia to shoot the Red Bull Soap Box.
The forecast had been predicting 100% chance of “heavy precipitation” for over 48 hours so the rain came as no surprise. But while being prepared was better than not, it still created the usual challenges of foggy lenses, wet equipment, dark skies, and soggy shoes.
As usual, we did our best to adapt to less than idea conditions and get the job done right. While not the styliest rain accessory, the poncho proved to be a good choice as it was easy to hold the camera under cover and duck inside to review histograms. Shower caps are a good solution for covering the camera body and ziplocks and rubber bands kept our speedlights and Pocket Wizards running smoothing… as long as drunks or soap box cars weren’t smashing into light stands and breaking our hot shoe connections (both happened).
The event was, in typical Red Bull fashion, rowdy, crazy, and fun. And while there are always interesting challenges to tackle, it keeps things interesting.
The event is insane and the masses of fans that showed up were even more mind blowing.We heard estimates of 100k+ fans in attendance thrown around and that number certainly didn’t feel far off.
We shot with two other photographers, Francois Portmann and Timothy Wheeler, both who were a pleasure to work with.
The shooting was a bit hectic as one of our locations was a floating dock that a fan who happened to own a tugboat anchored in the Willamette.A giant island of water vessels tethered together formed around the dock and to change angles you had to battle the drunken floating crowd and jump from ski boat to dingy to yaght without getting corralled by a guy with a megaphone or a beer bong.
Though parts proved challenging, the event was crazy fun to shoot and it was great working with the Red Bull Photofiles crew.
Huge thanks to Marv, Sandra, and everyone involved!
We just spent a week working at Mt. Hood and helping out with the HCSC photo session.
Trevor Graves from NEMO Design has put together an amazing program that brings kids interested in snowboard photography together to learn from the industries top photographers in both classroom and real-life shooting environments on the glacier.
The kids learned camera basics, post production, digital workflow, off camera lighting, and the business side of the snowboard photography world from some of the most knowledgeable professionals working in the industry.
It was amazing to see guys as successful and savy as Tim Zimmerman and Andy Wright generously sharing information with a room full of passionate kids eager to soak up every little nugget of info. Can’t be too many places where teenagers are squirming in their seats with excitement to learn about folder structures and file management.
We brought our Profoto kit up to the glacier for the kid’s night shoot and helped a small group of kids get some banger shots of Helly Hansen athlete Jake Knigge
This Friday we jumped on a plane and headed to the Lone Star State to shoot the Red Bull Sound Clash in Dallas. It was our first time to Texas and we weren’t sure exactly what to expect as our interactions with texans are usually on the mountain and not always pretty. Texans seemed [...]
Kastle came to us recently to work on several projects tying directly to their dealer network. The first one completed is a trophy for their four best dealers. We based the design off the brand guidelines and added the oval cutout which is based off the Hollowtech technology in the skis. The final pieces are [...]
Just returned from The Meeting in Aspen this past weekend and it was everything we expect that weekend to be… Amazing fall scenery in Aspen, fun parties, insightful discussions, productive meetings, and something really really fun courtesy of by Red Bull. The fall scenery was in full effect with snow dusting the peaks and leaves in full [...]
We have been brainstorming this event for years. A week ago it was finally time for a beta run. The general idea is to gather a panel of action sports experts from different fields of expertise and let it be known to college and high school age students that if you let your passions lead [...]
