Mt. Rose hired me recently to shoot the dedication of their new Winters Creek lodge that replaced the old wooden slide lodge at their ski resort in the mountains above Reno. Their main requirement was that they needed pictures of their torchlight parade, something they have not done in years.  Lucky for me I happen to know the proper exposure for a moving flare, because we only got one shot at this. A big thanks to the ski school boss in charge of the parade, John, for altering the plan to come down only one run at the base and split his skiers onto both sides of the mountain at the last minute. That really helped make the shot and fill up the foreground. Using our Nikon d3’s and d700’s, and one d300 on a remote on the roof, I sketched out a plan that involved many exposures. Since running the camera for several minutes while the parade made its way down the mountain would end up over-exposing a lot of the torches, as well as building up a lot of digital noise in the shadows. I opted for a sequenced string of 30 second exposures at iso 200/f8. Another exposure for the lodge (for the shot from below) and yet another to capture a faint deep blue of the dusk. All of these shots were then put together in a sequence, similar to a sequence shot of a skier going off a jump and the results were just what I had planned for. We also were asked to capture some views of the lodge and people using it, but since the party was on, we had little control over lighting or posing and just captured the moments in a pure photojournalistic style and hoped for the best.

Torchlight parade during the dedication of the Winters Creek lodge at Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe, made up of 5 images.

The winters creek lodge at Mt. Rose ski tahoe at dusk. Should be fun for some Apres ski come spring.

The interior of the new Winters Creek ski lodge at Mt. Rose ski tahoe.

The interior of the new Winters Creek ski lodge at Mt. Rose ski tahoe

The interior of the new Winters Creek ski lodge at Mt. Rose ski tahoe. They can make it look nice inside for weddings and special events, and the view can't be beat.

Table detail

Detail shot of coffee cups laid out.

The bar of the new Winters creek lodge all done up for special events.

They got the outdoor firepit working for the first time at the new Winters Creek lodge at Mt. Rose.

The photos from the remote roof camera of the torchlight parade down the slopes of Mt. Rose.

Just to have a different view, I had my wife shoot the torchlight parade from on the hill, looking back down at the new Winters Creek lodge at Mt. Rose. Despite wearing lots of lights and glowey things around her, the skiers in the parade said they were pretty much blinded by their flares and it is only dumb luck somebody didn't run into her standing in the middle of the run.