VOLUME 38 ISSUE 3 NOVEMBER SHOOTING GALLERY

VOLUME 38, ISSUE 3, NOVEMBER SHOOTING GALLERY

Photographers Describe Photos in November 2009 Shooting Gallery
Compiled by Sam Pelletier

Super Shutter Snapper: Erik Seo

Snow Grazer: Derek Spong

Narnia: Mount Bachelor, Oregon

Seo: It was one of those shoots where we knew we were going to be out just for the sunset. The hip was over on the Outback side of Mount Bachelor on the northwest face. They built the hip the night before and we got up there at around 6 o’clock for the sunset shoot. We had to do about two hours worth of work on the jump itself and the in-run. It was pretty late in the season; I think it was May. It was pretty soft so we ended up throwing down about 10 bags of salt. Spong was dialed the whole time. The kid is like a ninja up there. He’ll pretty much do anything, anywhere, anytime and it’ll be pretty sick. Sunsets like that are typical there that time of season. That’s why they built the jump there, specifically for the sunset. I don’t know why, but the sunsets over there are pretty dope. You get it a lot lower on the horizon on that side versus the Pine Marten side we were shooting on previously. Shooting with Rage is really mellow, it’s one of the reasons I like shooting with those guys. It’s really fun. All the kids on that crew are pretty fun—they’re kind of clowns.

[ Website ] - http://www.erikseo.com
[ Blog ] - http://www.erikseo.com/blog
[ Twitter ] - http://www.twitter.com/erikseo

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Super Shutter Snapper: Blake Jorgenson

Snow Grazer: Austin Ross

Narnia: Revelstoke, British Columbia

Jorgenson: That was taken on a Rossignol shoot last year. We were there with Sage [Cattabriga-Alosa] and Kye [Petersen]. It was a day when you normally wouldn’t shoot—a really crappy day and the snow was getting super warm. There’s this one crazy amphitheatre with that huge rock. There’s this overhanging cliff that’s flat with these bouldery pillows that you can catch tranny into. We made Austin hike up there and we promised him it would be worth it. I had to crawl into this cave and I was worried I was going to fall through a really thin snowpack.

It was a double-stager, so he doesn’t leave the ground all that much—just kind of bounces down the pillows. It was cloudy below and cloudy above us. There was one band of clear light. It created this effect that enabled me to get more detail underneath the rock where normally it would be darker.

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Super Shutter Snapper: Blake Jorgenson

Snow Grazer: Eric Hjorleifson

Narnia: Haines, Alaska

Jorgenson: That was a couple days into our trip in Haines. We were super low down in this valley. It was really windblown up high, so we shot a lot of stuff down low. It was in the shade, and I almost didn’t shoot it because of the bad light. The skiers really wanted to ski it, though. So I shot it on slope so I could get a run in. It was bright shade so I was able to do a cool P.O.V. black and white of Eric skiing those pillows. When I’m shooting up there I have a pretty good idea of where they’re going. I picked that spot where he was going to make the turn to be the shot. I ask them where they’re going to go and decide where the spots going to be. It was shot in color and then gray-scaled. Most of the time I shoot in shade or diffused light I end up gray-scaling it because it maximizes the contrast. That pillow line was massive—it must have been like 800 feet long.

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Super Shutter Snapper: Blake Jorgenson

Snow Grazer: Sean Pettit

Narnia: Haines, Alaska

Jorgenson: We had found this natural wind lip that the guys were hitting. Sean was doing these super long, floaty 3s and 7s where he was backwards in the air for a really long time. I thought it was cool being able to see the endless landing and the natural take off from the heli as opposed to just a cheese wedge. The way he’s sort of backwards with his arms out makes it look like he’s flying.

It was his first time there and he had sunny weather and ultra stable snow. The dangers and difficulties of Alaska weren’t really prevalent on that trip. So his first time in, he gets this super comfortable experience where he can push it right out of the gate. He didn’t have to deal with the usual issues of weather and light and avalanche danger, which is what really freaks people out. His next trip might be a lot different. He ended up crashing later on that jump and it ended his trip. He hurt his shoulder. He was givin’ ‘er the whole time and crashed quite a few times.

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Super Shutter Snapper: Chris Figenshau

Snow Grazer: Jason Tattersall

Narnia: Chamonix, France

Figenshau: This shot is of the Northeast face of Les Courtes. It’s a 3,000 vertical foot face on the Argentière Glacier. You travel up the glacier from the top of the Grande Montets lift. You hike up the glacier for an hour or two, basically bootpacking up the face. It’s more of a ski mountaineering type of descent. The conditions were really good. That kind of skiing doesn’t lend itself well to hip-deep powder. It’s more about getting that snow to stick to the firm ice that’s underneath everything. It was actually really good conditions for that. It was about boot deep powder on top of a firmer base. At the top it was wind-blown, which is pretty typical there. The tops of those runs are blown to blue ice. The top was a crampons- and ice-axe-type of climb.

It’s kind of a classic line. It’s probably 45-plus degrees consistently the whole way. It’s just a huge panel and its one of the few really long faces in Chamonix you can do without a rappel. In the photo you’re looking up the Argentiere Glacier—those mountains are at the head of glacier.

Really, we were just there to ski as much of that steep stuff as we could get on. It was in April and it was actually a really good spring for it. The two weeks after we were there were even better. We were after some of the steeper spring ski mountaineering lines. We weren’t really there to ski the resort. It’s a great time to go and tour.

We weren’t trying to set too much up with this shot. It’s not really the kind of place where you want to be hanging out too long. It’s not really the kind of environment where you want to be working. You get one shot at it and then move along. We were stoked to get that one.

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Super Shutter Snapper: Blake Jorgenson

Snow Grazer: Mark Abma

Narnia: Haines, Alaska

Jorgenson: This shot is Mark’s first run of the trip. He basically just found this feature that he wanted to try. I think it’s a rodeo 7. It was super deep, stable snow so it gave him the confidence to try it, and it gave him a lot of confidence for the rest of trip. It gave everybody a lot of confidence when you come out of the gates with a winner. He probably dropped 40 feet before he hit the ground and then he came skiing out of it. It was a huge explosion.

The light in February is good all day. The only challenge is finding stuff you want to ski that’s not shadowy. A lot of the lines have short moments of light on them. You actually have to mark down the times to get it, then go back the next day. When things look good, you need to be ready for the moment. When you look at something and say, “Let’s go film that,” by the time everyone is up there and ready its already gone. That’s how fast it moves in February. Having a trip with multiple days of sun you can watch the lines and figure out when you can get the shots.

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Super Shutter Snapper: Grant Gunderson

Snow Grazer: Pep Fujas

Narnia: Portillo, Chile

Gunderson: We’d been in Portillo, Chile, for a week already and hadn’t gotten much done. The temperature spiked the day before we got there and then froze so there wasn’t much for good snow. Luckily toward the end of the week, we had a pretty good storm day that shut the skiing down, and the next day it went completely bluebird. So, we had two feet of snow and blue skies. We hiked out from the Roca Jack lift and started getting different shots making laps back down to the lift. The Andes are so cool because you’re so high up there’s not much air pollution. When you get sunny weather it’s unreal. I haven’t seen skies so blue anywhere else. It wasn’t the deepest for Andes standards; I’ve definitely had bigger storms down there. But, we got 18 or 24 inches overnight. A foot and a half or two of good snow is tough to beat.

I thought it might be a pretty good spot based on the way the snow was blowing in. I had a feeling when he made a big turn the snow would explode up. Normally, I’d have a specific spot where I wanted the apex of the turn to be. In this instance, I just told Pep to ski it. It was a pretty slidy snowpack that day because we got a lot of snow on top of firmer snow. The photo was taken fairly early in the morning—first or second lap. It was a great way to start the morning. The most important factor was having Pep there. He’s one of the best skiers in the world for a reason. He likes to ski because he enjoys it, but there are very few people that work as hard as he does.