Snowboarding | New York City

No Sleep 'Till Denverrr

View from Liberty Park in New Jersey at about 12 am. 

    From my first days of shooting snowboarding I have always thought about what it would be like to shoot in New York City.  Unfortunately it is so rare for it to snow enough in the city and sit for more than a day.  When I saw the first ever named snowstorm, NEMO, coming through the North East I knew this would be my one and only chance.  I was on the phone Friday trying to get a hold of crews, calling RedBull HQ in NYC, and even random contacts at sponsors trying to get someone up there, and by Saturday morning I gave up.  I was out having a few cocktails with the fiancé when I randomly saw Pat Milbery on Facebook posting from Washington D.C. attempting to get to NYC.  About 3 hours later I was wheels up Business Class style still with cocktails leaving the sunny 75 degree weather to the windy, cloudy, and 15 degree New York weather.
     When I got there it was no sleep till Denver status to get the shots we needed.  There was actually a rain storm directly behind the cold front.  We were only expecting to get a day and a half of shooting in before the snow would be gone.  We ended up getting very lucky and the rain was just a light mist all day.  We ended up with 3 and a half days of shooting around NYC, with 2 of the days with the RedBull wench thanks to Kyle.

The group in Central Park

    Looking back at the trip, I almost never realize how lucky I am to have gotten there.  I ended up with some of the best snow photos of my life, and got to drive around New York City for the 3rd time, in the 3rd natural disaster in a row there.  I already had 2 hurricanes down there, and this was my first big snowstorm there.  We ended up with a lot of help from certain police department and security crews, allowing us acess to closed areas to get the shots we were all gunning for!

On the Way to Brooklyn

Welcome to Brooklyn

    Here is a little write up that ESPN put on their home page of the trip, with a few spot leaks.  This is actually my first time ver on the ESPN home page, and prob one of the first few for the action sports industry.  Adding even more excitedment to the story, we got posted up next to a story on Micheal Jordan.  Be on the look out for the print shots coming out soon!

ESPN front page

The full Story

Downtown Financial distract post sunset

Uptown and Central park area at sunset

Sunrise pow slashes

New Jersey Wenching

Post golden hour in the Blue minutes

The RedBull MXT at Liberty Park around 1 am

Print Biz | Six Twenty Four Magazine (First Issue)

    Here are a few tears from the first issue of a new Colorado based action sports mag, Six Twenty Four.  Riders included in the mag are;

Wake
A.J. Racinelli, Nick, Galotifiore, Danny Burnstein, and Steel Lafferty.

Snow
Pat Milbery, Brent Myer, Emily Blewitt, Kjersti Buaas, Mark Hoyt, Braden Wahr, A.J. Szram, Ian Smith, Raewyn Reid, Elena Hight.

Print Biz | Snowboard Colorado (December Issue)

Some Screen Grabs from the December issue of Snowboard Colorado.

Print Biz | Playboard

    Photo issue number 10 "No Words No Lies!"  just dropped in Germany this past week.  Super excited to have one of the few snow shots in the issue.  Playboard is a snow and skate magazine that is based in Germany and distributed world wide.  Check out the link here, and it also comes with a rad dvd.

    This shot was about 3 years in the making.  Braden Wahr and I shot this about 4 years ago for the first time in sub zero temps.  This is a massive up-rooted tree in the middle of a water retention pound.  It took about 5 hours to build the half pipe for the original shot.  2 years later (last season) we came back to the tree     to get a better shot that we were looking for.  This time it was more around pre-season with warmer weather.  It only took about  minutes to a hour to set up and get ready.  The run in for this was pretty gnarly in the dark, through bushes, and around trees!

    The light set up was two Elinchrom Rangers and a Nikon SB-800 speed light.  One Ranger had two A-heads, one aimed directly at the roots, and the other as a back light from behind the rider.  The other Ranger was in front of me to my left with an A-head on it.  The SB-800 was behind the roots with an orange gel filter on it.  Everything was fired with PocketWizard Multimax's.

The Cover:

The Print:

1/250th a sec F 5 14mm Nikon 14-24mm 

Other shot option:

2 Seasons ago:

Print Biz | Snowboard Colorado

    This is one of Braden Wahr's first two page spreads in Snowboard Colorado.  I felt like I spent 25 percent of my season in this pillow zone last year.  It has produced a cover, 14 prints, and about 67,000 is lost calories from hikeing so far and more to come!
    The setup was pretty simple.  I have an Elinchrom Ranger to the left hidden in he trees. Another Ranger is also in the obvious spot on the right in the photo, and a small Nikon speedlite being to light up the snow. This was one of my first few hypersync shots from last season before the tech came out.

Nikon 14-24mm 1/640th at f 11 iso 200

Print Biz | Tear Away (Warren Miller Wintervention ad)

    Steve Fisher's ad for Warren Miller Wintervention in Tear Away Magazine out of New Zealand!  This was released back in May.  For those of you who do not know Steve Fisher, he is one of the top half pipe riders in the world.  He is one of the only two people in the world to have beaten Shaun White!  Steve is a super nice guy and very motivated by his riding.  I got lucky enough to shoot him a few times this year in the back country and studio.

Here is the official preview of the video.

Elinchrom Rangers | Flash

    Introducing my exclusive flash set up;  the Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed packs with A and S heads.

    When I was looking for my first flash set up portability was my first concern.  I knew I would be out in the snow miles away from the closest out let and cigaret lighter.  That would immediately narrow it down to just a few companies for me.  I also ruled out speed lights because of the lack of power, unless you want to bring out a whole backpack full of them with 7000 batteries.  

    After that I was looking at flash duration and batterie life.  That brought it down to Profoto and Elinchrom.  At the time there was no hyper sync so I was looking for the fastest flash head available.  Which of course is the Elinchrom ranger A Head.  I needed the shorter flash duration to freeze the motion to create a sharper image.  I was still in between Profoto and Elinchrom, even with the shorter flash duration on Elinchrom side.

    The next step was, "what am I really going to put the flashes through."  I was just thinking a little snow, some sand and some water.  I was even factoring in the size and weight for travel.  At the time the Ranger was one of the only weather "resistant" pack out there, it could also be set down in 6 inches of water.  I looked at the Profoto and it has a ton of openings to let in the weather, not good for me.    Profot was also heavier, and I need every ounce I can get for air travel.

    Super long story short I ended up going with the Elinchrom Ranger Speed AS.  I felt the resistance to weather would be the best for me.  Little did I know at the time what these packs were really going to go through!  Over the past few years I have had these in rain, snow, hail, sand storms, water, lakes, oceans, negative degree weather to well over a hundred degrees.  They have been strapped to snowmobiles, boats, planes, helicopters, snow cats, dog sleds, cars, 4 wheelers, dirt bikes, dune buggies.  They have flown around the world and back on countless airlines.  

 

    I have never had one thing go wrong with any of my packs or flashes yet.  They have been trough it all.  I keep them in Burton F-Stop packs which only provide a limited amount of protection.  Even the packs have been though it all with them.  They have been sucked into snowmobile tracks, ran over by snowmobiles, landed on my helis, back up on by snow cats, survived long trips on ski boats with 10 people on them, stuffed into jetskis (which were half submerged), dropped down massive cliffs, and teeter tottering on ladders over water.

    This is where I would like to thank my packs for never failing me.  They always fire no matter what condition.  They are always there no matter how much I abuse them, and they always give me the light I need to create my images.  So here's to you Elinchrom Rangers!

Click to enlarge!

Print Biz | Going Mainstream!!

Yes Nylon Magazine (for guys).  A few trips back Pat Milbery got the Call for this Casio collaboration with Nylon Magazine.  Long story short; I flew up to Colorado for about 18 hours to shoot this adin Golden, and managed to drive up to Breckenridge to shoot a quick road gap with my bud's Braden Wahr and A.J. Szram.  I also got to meet up with John Roderick, Cort Muller and John Spriggs who were shooting the new skull candy commercial with the sleds in the parking lot.  It ended up being a pretty fun and fast trip to CO.  Congrats to Milbs for getting his Nylon ad.

MIA for Months! | It's Snow Season

    It's been a long time since I've posted up.  Snowboard season has been in full effect and wakeboarding has not died down yet!  I'll be posting up all month so keep on following!

    I spent the last week plus in Colorado with the Nowsnowboarding.com crew.  The crew consist of some of the first guys I started shooting snow with back in the day.  Check out this video they put down and you can get an idea of how the they roll.

Now Snowboarding Cribs from Ian Smith on Vimeo.