This idea built on a shoot I did early in the year. That shoot can be seen HERE. Skateboarding was my original idea and after we shot that I was stoked how it came out and decided to expand on the concept further. At first I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and brainstormed some ideas before randomly stumbling on flatland BMX. While scrolling through my phone I remember having seen someone post on a local Facebook group asking if anybody had built a BMX bike recently. I went back and tried to find this post and searched the group and ending up coming across a video of someone riding in Whistler. The rider in the video was good and that was when I thought flatland BMX would be a good option. I reached out to the rider, Mickael Loiodice, and after I explained my concept he was down to give it a go. 

This was a commercial shoot for the Scandinave Spa in Whistler. They were interested in featuring a new product, Duo Massage and the goal was to capture imagery that highlighted this experience. In my conversations leading up to this shoot I knew they wanted to create a warm welcoming feeling that gave an inviting feel to the experience.

Rain, high winds and overall bad weather led to a mountain closure and a down day this season in Bariloche, Argentina. Since I didn’t want to not shoot anything this day I made a plan to capture some portraits since we weren’t able to get out on the mountain. Behind the lodge we were staying in was a new construction project that was partially completed. I had poked my head in a few days before and liked the look and knew I wanted to get in here to shoot at some point. I knew who was doing the construction so I asked for permission and got the go ahead to head in.

I was excited going into this shoot! In the past Whistler Blackcomb has done lots of sunset park shoots, but they haven’t happened as often in recent years. This past two year filmmakers Ryan Regher and Jeff Thomas were working on a couple video projects for WB and had the right pull to be able make a few different sessions happen.

Prior to this year my opportunities to participate in a sunset park shoot like this had been limited, so I jumped at the chance when Ryan gave me a call. Photo assets weren’t specifically necessary for either of these shoots, but knowing how rare these sunset shoots are I still wanted to make it happen. Without the pressure of needing to deliver specific images it allowed for more creative freedom to capture the images I wanted to.

Over the years I’ve always been intrigued by the Red Bull Illume photo contest. The work that makes it to finals of this event is some of the greatest action sports photography from a laundry list of the best action sports and adventure photographers in the world. I always make a point of entering this contest and finding images in my collection to submit.

Like most people, I spend way more time than I should on social media just scrolling through imagery. I find myself visually attracted to images with a cinematic feel, that are dark and moody, with lots of deep blacks. While most of my work I shoot is on the brighter side I was inspired to create something that had this feel.

I first shot kayakers on this waterfall years ago but at the time just used natural light. We shot on a cloudy day, and at the time I was excited about the images, but looking back my excitement had faded and they weren’t super strong. They kayaking was still impressive, but the images were flat and weren’t anything special.

I had the idea towards the end of last summer to try and shoot the falls using a flash to create a more dynamic image that showcased the power of the water and the shape of the waterfall. At that time of year the water is to low to safely paddle so it needed to wait. I sat on the idea for the winter and waited until the spring when the water levels would be higher. 

This shoot came around last minute. Keon reached out to me looking to get some photos of his bike, but wanted to get them done before he started riding it. The original photographer he was going to work with fell through. We had never met, but a friend recommended me and when he asked I immediately had an idea of how I wanted to make it look so I said I’d be down to give it a go.

This idea lived in my head for a while. When I first thought about it I was hurt, on crutches, and spending most of my time on the couch. With all this time to brainstorm I was able to come up with ideas I was excited about but had no ability to actually execute them. Therefore I sat on this one for a while and figured out the logistics of making it work.

Recently I asked to shoot a portrait of Canadian Snowboarder Cam Spalding that matched some previous portraits of athletes I had shot.

When I first started shooting these portraits I knew I was going to need to repeat the look between multiple different athletes. These portraits needed to feel similar, but didn’t need to be identical. From the get go I decided to use a very simple lighting setup as I expect to need to repeat this more and won’t always have the luxury of doing so from home.

I wanted to create an image of returning home after a day on the hill skiing. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could create an evening scene in the middle of the day. We shoot these images around noon on a partially sunny day.

This wasn’t the particular image I had planned for the day, but I’ve had an idea similar to this in my mind for a while. I picked up the athlete, Will Goneau, from nearby this location, and thought if we had time we could check it out after we finished the original shot we planned to try this other idea I had.

We focused on the first shot, which was a top own running image in the forest. After we completed this image I asked Will if he was down and we went back to the underground parking lot.

As a photographer, I often wish I could be in multiple places at the same time to get imagery from a few angles. This specifically happens when shooting a jump where each rider might only take a couple tries.

When I first show up to a jump I usually try and do a full 360 around the jump. Checking out every angle to see where the feature looks best. Some jumps, based off the terrain they are built in are limited and might only look good from one side. Others have multiple angles, and one isn’t necessarily better than another.

Ben Poechman had a spot in mind he wanted to hit. He had been there a few days before and set it up, but just needed to wait for it to snow for the landing to get soft. When he reached out to me he said the feature was right at the end of the forest. This was my first day back shooting snowboarding of the 2020/2021 season and while I hadn’t shot snowboarding with strobes in a while I knew I wanted to do that for this image. The feature was close to a chairlift so it took away some of the difficulty of the logistics of hauling all the gear.

When getting out for this sunrise I had a specific shot in mind I wanted to shoot. Not to long ago, I shot a sunrise image in the fall. Later that spring, a massive landslide on Joffre Peak took off half the face of the mountain, altering the mountains look. While the peak was only a small element in the photo, I wanted to shoot the same landscape and show the difference between before and after. We got there just in time for sunrise, I set up my tripod and got the shot I was after.

When shooting you can plan all you want, but sometimes everything comes down to luck. Getting this exact framing depends almost entirely on luck.

While in Tofino, we decided to take a day to hop on a boat and check out the shoreline from a different perspective. In doing so we came across a lot of wildlife ranging from bears to grey whales and orcas. Being on the water gave an unobstructed view, as I didn’t need to shoot through a thickly forested mountainside.

For his 30th birthday, Tony Pavlantos made the goal to hike and snowboard 30,000 vertical feet on Mount Superior in Utah. This is no easy feat and it took the better part of a day to do this. He was up all night hiking and riding, and stopping for breaks in between to take a nap.

I didn’t have a particular plan to make an image in the ice cave. Ben Poechman and I planned to get out on Whistler Blackcomb on what was supposed to be a mostly sunny day. The idea was to shoot images on the giant ice blocks that fall off cornices in the spring. However, a storm came in and we were instead hanging out in a whiteout with nearly zero definition. We decided to go and check out the ice cave as it was nearby and we hadn’t been in a while.

When I lived Utah, anytime I was going up into the mountains to adventure, or snowboard I would drive past this spot in Big Cottonwood Canyon. I had scoped this angle when checking out a climbing location and knew I wanted to make a photograph here. It was a matter of waiting for the ideal conditions.

This was another one of those days where we got skunked by the weather. We had some good conditions in the morning, but as we moved into the afternoon it started to cloud out with high clouds at first. Noticing this sun dog starting to be visible I knew I wanted to get a shot with the rider in front of it. We were already in a zone taking some fun laps that had a slope that lined up reasonably well. I wanted the sun dog to intercept the slope so the rider appeared in the middle.