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.

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.