This is what I call a two-fer. I had this location on Incline peak scouted for this shot on a clear day. Unfortunately when that clear day arrived, my wife was the only person available to hike up there with me. Fortunately she is a good photographer, so I schlepped the cameras up, set up the shot and had her pull the trigger while I skied the line and we ended up on the cover of this year's Lake Tahoe winter recreation guide.
My how cluttered our digital lives are getting. I remember when the internet made things quicker and easier. We had search engines for looking up stuff instead of going to the library, and we had email instead of mailing letters and waiting weeks. When did it all get so complicated? Just trying to keep up with letting anyone at all find me and my work now requires hours of web updates, managing my mobile searchable archive of stock images, keeping up with the facebook posts for our wedding photography business, keeping up with the summer blog posts for Reno Mountain Sports, which sponsors me as a semi-pro freestyle kayaker, and who knows what else. Time flies by in a whirlwind of shooting and sitting and I am only just realizing that I have been ignoring my main stock photography blog for nearly a year now.
Well, the other day it snowed on us and today dawned the coldest day yet, so I figure it is a good time to get pumped up about skiing and post some of my favorite ski images from the lake tahoe area from last season. Some of this work comes from the advertising work I do at Mt. Rose and some just for fun. Ski photography is really tricky. You can have great riders, and great snow and a great sky, but they rarely all come together at the same time. I think we had only two really deep bluebird powder days all last season. Most of the powder days were cloudy. One took me completely by surprise and I found myself up at Mt. Rose early during what was predicted to be a cloudy and stormy day, staring at 2 feet of snow and blue skies with no riders in site. After a quick phone call to the resort’s PR folks, we decided it would be worth a try to get something, so I grabbed some skiers out of the line and a couple of patrollers and we tried to make some shots. They were good, but still nothing like having a couple of pro riders there who can hit their marks and look good doing it.
Enjoy the photos, here is a quick link to my archive of winter stock photographs which you photo buyers out there can feel free to search.
.jpg "kayak snow Boater-X")
Mt. Rose added a new dimension to their special events by hosting the first (that we know of) snow boater cross on the west coast. I was both competing and photographing this event. This shot of Jr. World champion kayaker Jason Craig was used by National Geographic Adventure for thier best adventure town blurb on Reno
.jpg "sunrise backflip skiers")
A sunrise backflip on skis near the Mt. Rose summit. I had hoped Moment skis might be interested in trading one of these shots for some gear since my skis are getting busted up, but no bites yet.
Another big air shot on Moment Nighttrain skis
Even the little tykes love the backcountyr. Here 7 year-old Blaise poses on his custom kiddie Moment skis, handmade in Reno.
Well, we are in the wild west, so Moment rider Jared and I decided to screw around one day and borrowed a six shooter and some cowboy gear for this shot that we thought might be interesting.
JJ Shiller at the subaru freeskiing world championship competition at Kirkwood 2010
I was experimenting with my Go Pro camera set to shoot still photos to see if I could get an interesting angle on powder skiing. It didn't quite work, but next snowfall I know what to do to make it sing.
.jpg "mt rose pond skim")
These are a few shots from the pond skim at Mt. Rose ski tahoe. I did the photography for them, I was also the forerunner for the course.
.jpg "mt rose pond skim")
This year I was the forerunner for the course, which was a good thing because it was a very cold morning and we had the original start area so high up that I flew across the water, caught huge air on the exit and barely stopped before I crashed through the gate on my first run. We made a few adjustments and got it nice and friendly for the competitors. You can have a look at my POV video of the first few runs here.
.jpg "mt rose groomers girls")
Carving the groomers at Mt. Rose. This is a variation on one of the photos they used for a highway billboard and as their facebook icon for a while.
.jpg "mt rose terrain park")
Mark riding rails at Mt. Rose ski tahoe.
.jpg "mt rose terrain park")
Schmearing that turn
.jpg "mt rose terrain park")
We wanted a few shots from Mt. Rose to show the beautifull falloff into the dry desert of Washoe Valley. Just a note to you budding pro riders out there, you can have super cool modern clothes and that is a good thing, but about 70% of what buyers choose to publish from my images involve red or yellow. Just food for thought.
Looking for the light in the backcounty near Donner Summit.