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Girl on girl action

A couple months ago Evil Editor hit me up about shooting a girls trip – I was initially hesitant as I had heard from various photographers about how different, and in someways difficult and frustrating, it is to organise and shoot a banger female snowboard trip for publication. For the last few years I’ve just been shooting a bunch of guys, most of whom were my friends before I was a “Senior Photographer”. But when I heard that I wouldn’t even have to travel outside of home-base Lake Tahoe to shoot Nitro/3CS’s Jess Rich and Roxy’s CP (Courtney Phillipson), I started to warm to the challenge and opportunity to have some pretty faces to look at instead of Ben’s heinous red beard.

And when CP rolled up ready to rock: quickly buying a plane ticket from Colorado, booking a motel, hiring a car, and bringing her own shovel even, it was a welcome change from some of the penny-pinching guys I’ve had to shoot over the last few years. Too bad Jess was holed up at Squaw Valley, with only the hourly TART local bus to get in around vast Lake Tahoe…but we’d find a way to work around that.

Just as CP was flying in, a major storm had just dumped a foot of snow in town, and with blue Saturday morning skies we jumped in the black panther Chevy Tahoe and headed up the road to Donner Pass. It was epic! Perfect sunshine, but crisp, cold conditions (rare for mid-March) keeping the foot and a half of light dry powder in perfect shape. Darragh, Longy and Ben came along for the ride, and helped set up a couple of jumps (which were left over by others from previous storms, just needing a reshaping) so the girls could just save their energy for the numerous hikes back to the drop-in zone. Not only was this Jess’ first proper photo shoot, but her first time in the backcountry, first time hitting a hand-made jump…and first attempts (and stomps) in powder! It was a great first day, getting to know the girls better, being impressed by their strong riding and “can-do, will-stomp-it” attitudes. And to round out the day I managed to snap a couple shots of the boys and even get to hit one of the jumps myself (for a change). (And thanks to Ben for some of the shots I stole from his blog)

The girls were here to shoot for four days only, and so I revisited some rails around the lake (finding one chained up and unhittable…unless we went to buy some bolt cutters), and had a day at Northstar to round out the article with some park shots. And another first for Jess: her first urban rail, first attempt at a backside 50-50…which she nailed first go! I think seasoned vet, CP, was a little stunned.

Before the girls arrived I was trying to come up with some sort of concept, or at least a “visual hook” to try and make the article look different, and to make it relevant to a two-girl photo shoot. I like to have a theme, or concept to all my magazine trips just to give me something beyond the regular to try and focus on. So I started to think about Jess vs CP, and Snow White’s “Mirror, mirror on the wall…who is the fairest of them all?” refrain. Mirrors, two good-looking girls, doing their makeup in front of the mirrow, one regular, one goofy-footer etc etc…with the idea that I would try and shoot all the features from opposite, but equal sort of angles (where possible) so that if the photos were side by side, they would almost look like mirror images. This also gave me a theme for some “lifestyle” photos to accompany the action based on legendary (and slightly creepy) Australian-German Vogue photographer, Helmut Newton, who must have drawn some influence from Velazquez’ Baroque masterpiece (click in the hypertect links to see these visual references). But I can tell you that you won’t see any Newtonesque naked shots of CP and Jess in Australian-NZ Snowboarder…I saved those for my personal collection!

After all said and done, I was really pleased how the four days panned out: the girls threw down, impressed me greatly with their riding skills, weathed the bumps and bruises, and they were always positive and smiling (and only failed on one super-gnarly rock-exposed rail that had me shit-scared just looking at it, and only because they lacked the speed to get onto it properly). So feeling like we had pretty much got all the shots we wanted (and enought to keep Evil Editor happy), it was nice the next few days to be able to get back to just shredding The Star with the (somewhat-uglier-to-look-at) boys and celebrate Darragh’s 24th Birthday co-inciding with St Patrick’s Day down at Stateline. Tomorrow we’re off to June mountain for a night or two for my last session of photo-taking for the season…it’ll be nice to pack the camera in the bag at the end of it and know that I’m done for 2009-2010 publication shooting season.

Californication

Wow – where has the time gone? The 10 or so days back in California after the whirlwind that was Vancouver 2010 and my side trip to New York have been even more hectic. No rest for the wicked I guess…and I prefer to have projects to work on. It makes me less likely to waste those rare free-ride days by sleeping in.

A lot of snow has disappeared in Tahoe since early Feb, but Pete Long and Darragh Walsh both found some warm-up features to shoot one night near home. Longy’s air-through-tree-branches to flat was pretty gnarly, but got a little interrupted when some local douchebags came out to heckle him. You’ll see an “atmospheric” shot (ie – only one of the three flashes fired) in the attached gallery.

A couple days later on the Monday we started the long drive south down US Hwy 395 through Carson City, and Mammoth (to pick up Jake McCarthy) all the way to magical Los Angeles. I took the three guys down as part of a magazine trip idea I had had for a while: basically, a surf, snowboard, skate and party trip to the City of Angels. Very few Australians realise that California actually has mountains and skifields, let alone that there are handful of progressive freestyle resorts within 3 hours drive of Hollywood!

I’d organised some cheap rooms at the pimping Hotel Erwin right on the famous Venice Beach Boardwalk, and directly opposite the brand new skatepark, basketball courts (where I got my white-men-can-dunk on) and Muscle Beach (where Darragh, inspired by Mr Muscle Robbie Walker, sparred up against the local hard bodies). Longy was in his element (not least because the hotel restaurant was called “Hash”, and the rooftop bar “High”) as he was surrounded by skaters, surfers, tattoo parlours, cafes…and hot California girls. Ol’ Pete is pretty impressive riding transitions and we got some nice shots in Venice before heading south to the semi-ghetto docks and refineries of San Pedro to an underground community skatepark. The San Pedro skatepark was started illegally on a vacant lot under a freeway overpass, and slowly grew through the work of volunteers into a legit triple-bowl setup that the council had to then recognise and authorise. It was great from a photography point of view as it was quite dark under the freeway and meant the three small Canon Speedlight flashes I had didn’t need to overpower the sun and could be utilised to the maximum. Again Longy shredded concrete, and Jake nailed a nice backside smith grind and frontside crailslide. A local grommet was ripping, and I snapped a couple shots of him (not everyone worked out exactly as I wanted though, but I was happy with the shots of the Aussie crew).

The next day we finally got to hit the snow, checking out of Hotel Erwin and making the Mt Baldy carpark in under 1 hour 30! Mt Baldy reminded of a dodgy Mt Hotham: run-down and haphazard, but great steep terrain, deep gullies and twisting banked trails for jibbing everywhere. Bear Mountain was another great mountain, and lived up to expectations – jib and freestyle city. And I was amazed at how much snow was down in SoCal: so much more than up in Tahoe!

The weather was forecast to roll in, so we high-tailed it back to Hollywood (in under 2 and a half hours) to fulfil the other trip requirement: partying! The others were pretty tired from a few days skating and snowboarding, and low on cash so we headed to the famous rock ‘n’ rollin’ Rainbow Bar and Grill for a few beers…and bumped into Ron Jeremy and his massive package. Man, he looks so seedy in person with his salt and pepper porn mo’. Saturday was for shopping and exploring Fairfax Avenue (and seeing Darragh froth out over a bunch of “exclusive” streetware shop labels I’d never heard of) and a mellow night out again before we hit the road again to Mountain High.

Again we were there within one and a half hours (and without the winding access road that both Baldy and Bear had), and with the West resort all lit up, we had till 10pm to get the goods. We’d been cruisin’ round West Hollywood in 20 degrees and sunshine, and rock ‘n’ roll McCarthy was in jeans, denim jacket, fingerless gloves and sunglasses to shred…shame about the wicked blizzard and fog that rolled in off the Pacific Ocean to ruin his fun. He nearly had a major spaz attack, he was so cold. But after he found some extra layers to rug up with we got some shots and by 8pm were on the road north again. The boys were keen to get back home, but with food and petrol stops we didn’t get back to Mammoth till 2am, and to Tahoe till 5am!. To say we were knackered would be an understatement. But it was a great, action packed 6 days: we got the shots, had a heap of fun, saw a lot of new things (and a few celebrities). You’ll be able to check out the full report in Australian-New Zealand Snowboarder Magazine this winter, but here’s a few shots to whet your appetite.

5 Nights in New York…

New York is an amazing city to take photos of. It’s so picturesque with all the buildings, people and places. You don’t need to wait for brilliant sunsets, or blue skies; you can get a good photo rain, hail, shine…or snow. It’s hard to go wrong when you take a camera out of your bag or pocket.

I flew into The Big Apple after partying till 3.30am after Torah’s Gold, waking at 5.30am to get to the aiport in time, and arriving at 8pm NY-time…and it was straight to my friend Annika’s West Greenwich Village apartment…and surprise, surprise, a couple wines and beers and I was out on the town again. I like to go out and enjoy a few beverages, but after 10 days on the party programme in Vancouver it was starting to get a bit difficult to keep going. But once out in SoHo and up in a rooftop Meatpacking District club, I managed to find a second, or third, wind.

New York is always full of surprises, and it was good to do some new things, like walk across the Brookly Bridge and take the cliched suspension-wires shot. Down in SoHo we met Annika’s Finnish friend Stephanie at the same horrible Starbucks I had once spotted legendary photog and deviant, Terry Richardson. Just as we were about to leave a weird, toothless, dirty and tatty homeless guy chatted up the girls – turns out he too is a photog, Mark Fisher (only then did I notice the two MacBooks on his table and multiple camera bags shoved under the table). He was off on a drug-come-down babble giving Stephanie advice on her jewelry line and how to make it big in the Big Apple. Despite being such a weirdo with such dirty fingernails and one missing ring finger, he actually had some good ideas. A definite surprise.

The rest of my time in NY was a mixture of walking around, going for dinner and sunday brunch, dropping by Stephanie’s apartment which she shared with an old English drag queen named Livinia (let me tell you, there was some interesting literature on the shelves), then heading out to an assortment of bars in the East Village, and then just catching up on some rest after 10 hectic day at the Olympics. I just had my little Sony Cybershot in my pocket – more discreet, and easier to carry – and I’m pretty happy with the overall results. Yeah, there’s some barrel distortion, but for a 150 bucks it takes some nice shots and I don’t have to worry so much about breaking or losing it. I’m pretty simple with my photo-editing skills, limited to just the (now-problematic) Canon software and Photoshop. Before I stole his crampons, Himbrechts had put me onto Adobe Lightroom (which now has a version 3 Beta you can download for free) and so I mucked around with the presets, or just gave a slight tweak with some contrast and saturation. I hope you like the results.

Canadians are weird, man!

Wow – there are a lot of loud, drunk and dumb hockey rednecks that congregate en masse down Granville Street. I know that Australians can be unbelievably embarrassing, and the cheap flights of V Australia and Jetstar are just allowing povvo bogans to travel overseas for the first time and ruin the reputation for the rest of us, but I don’t remember Sydney 2000 having such an agressive, teetering-on-out-of-control vibe…but maybe that’s because I was part of the “team” cheering along, and not a foreigner making sure that I smile and high-five the gangs of guys in red, lest I get set upon? Or maybe it has something to do with the brainless way Canadians cheer for their 51st State of America. After 10 days at Sydney 2000 I never wanted to hear “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie…Oi, Oi, Oi…” again. In Vancouver, Granville is jam packed with a sea of red and white, random games of street hockey, and chants that start up: “Can-a-da!…Can-a-da!…” Or guy will start screaming “Whoooooooo!” and then another will join in, or it will be “Yeahhhhhhhh!” and another will join in till the street sounds like a riot. Their cheering and chants are even more brainless than ours…and it’s the worst in an around Canadian hockey matches. (But then again, ‘U-S-A! U-S-A!” is pretty uninventive as well.)

And I forgot, I found another difference between Aussies and Canadians at the start of the week: Aussies shout “Show us ya tits!” at Indy/Bathurst/Melbourne Cup, whereas the Canuck chant must be ‘We want boobs! We want boobs!” After the Opening Ceremony a random mosh pit of crowd surfers (with the aforementioned “Whoooos” and “Yeaaahhhh”s) had formed on Robson and Howe Streets, and when a girl was lifted on to shoulders the booby chant started, and wasn’t sated till another girl was lifted upon high for a faux-lezo makeout. An interesting, organic way to celebrate the start of the Olympics I guess?

And I have also noticed a bit of a “bad sportsmanshio” from the home team, whether it be claiming to “Own the Podium”; or bar crowds cheering-on the last non-Canadian (and incidentally American) mogul skier to “Fall, Fall, Fall!”; ripping the flag off the back of some Americans cheering down Granville and throwing it on the ground; or booing former-Canadian Dale Begg-Smith during his medal ceremony. I hope that Aussies would never act such a way – but then again, my impressions might be coloured by the fact I had been getting back to Vancouver exhausted and grumpy each night, hating having to dodge throngs to get home, and seeing the crowds at their drunken worst?

Anyway, right now I’m in West Village, New York, New York! I decamped from the Olympics the day after Torah’s amazing Gold-Medal win – but sort of wish I had have stuck around now. And what a night it was. I was so nervous – so nervous to get the shot after she blew her first run (as night shots are clearly so different looking to the qualification photos), and so nervous for her to score well and get the win. Afterwards, I felt so happy for her and gave her a rousing shout-out and wave from the photo-pit in front of the podium – she waved back…and it gave everyone else who wasn’t cheering like an idiot a great million-dollar-smile shot looking right down the camera. So another shot missed by me. But she was smiling so much and looked so excited that i quickly blew the rest of the 16gig card on “jube” (jubilation shots, so Himbrechts tells me).

I finally managed to get up alongside the pipe – Himbrechts had left his pair of crampons lying around, which I naturally purloined and made the long hike up for the girls’ training and qualifications. Both Holly and Torah rode amazingly well, and went so big. It was awesome to watch up close. It’s hard along the pipe, as you aren’t given much chance to move around or get close to the lip for the regular fisheye shot. So I struggled to get some good shots, but think a couple turned out ok. And still I’m having trouble with my software processing the Canon EOS 1DMkIV RAW files to jpegs to put up on the web – but fear not, Evil Editor, the shots are there and there are some pretty nice ones – I’ll sort it out somehow. So again, all I have are the ones from my regular back-up 1DMkIIN and the candid pocket Sony Cybershot ones. And anyway the best of the Aussie shots I have to save for the mags: they won’t publish any shot that has been splashed around on the net before. So enjoy this small selection of action and behind the scenes.

SBX at Cypress

The first Monday of Vancouver 2010 was the beginning of a loooong four days (hence no more updates till now). After Sunday late-night drinks it was a 6am wakeup to try and get on the 7am Media bus from the MPC up to Cypress in order to get onto the actual SBX course. It was pitch dark when I woke…which made it all the harder to get out of bed, but it was a pretty spectacular sunrise across the water from Lionsgate Bridge.

Annoyingly, the Cypress media/photo crew had been really restrictive about access to both the pipe and BX track, and about deadlines for access. But after jumping though a million hoops, I was finally strapped onto my board and riding down the side of the course. It felt so good to have the camera bag on the back and to be able to slide on snow again…although it had been only 6 days since I was last up at Northstar. It was great to see Chumpy destroy the course (well, the 2 or 3 turns i could see at a time) and hear about both his fastest time qualification runs. I was hoping to move from location to location between rounds in the afternoon finals, but the VANOC nazis were out in force. Fortuately, I was right near a CTV cameraman who let a few of us look over his shoulder at the live feed of all the action down the course. Without this, and not being able to hear the PA commentary so far away at the finish-line, I would have had no way of knowing who was progressing through each heat. It was a shame Chumpy and Damon couldn’t progress further, but they should both be proud of the gung-ho attacking nature of their riding.

VANOC had a huge ‘fail’ with the location of the Olympic Cauldron, which is nicely located on the water…but surrounded by an ugly, temporary-looking cyclone wire fence! Each morning there are thousands of tourists clogging the streets around the Main Press Centre (MPC) and International Broadcast Centre (IBC) – right next to the Cauldron – who leave disappointed with the view and (lack-of) photo opportunity. It’s a shame they couldn’t get something so obvious right, amongst the other problems of the Games. I managed to check out the scene on the way to Womens SBX. It was rainy and cloudy down in Van, but much, much worse up the hill. But after a couple hours postponement and delay, the girls hit the track. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Steph Hickey with a bigger smile on her face than in the start gate for her first qualy run. I was feeling pretty beat by the time of the Womens finals, and stayed in the warmth to watch the action on the media centre TVs. And with all the halfpipe practice scheduled for the evenings, with the early SBX starts and late partying nights I was pleased to discover that I wasn’t the only one tring to snatch some catch-up sleep wherever I could. After witnessing Lindsey Jacobellis’ brain fade on the second-last jump at Torino 2006, I was hoping she would find some redemption, but again a split-second escape cost her gold (and any medal this time). Boardercross is a pretty harsh sport.

I borrowed a brand-spanking-new Canon EOS 1D MkIV body to shoot some of the SBX, but for some reason my software won’t let me process the RAW files into jpegs. So here are just a few shots taken on my ‘back-up” 1D MkIIN (and pocket Sony Cybershot). I hope to get it sorted soon and put a greater variety of shots up…but checking out the local paper after the first day of snowboarding, clearly i’m doing it all wrong. Himbrechts has started doing agency/newspaper work so this must be what he’s aiming for: a ‘soft’ (due to super cropping) out-of-control “man-in-the-sky”. I must say, it was interesting to see how out of control the riders looked a lot of the time. But I guess with such a challenging, gnarly course and pushing for every bit of speed the aesthetics of your riding are furthest from your mind – the opposite of what we aim to achieve when shooting for one of the mags.