Another question that comes up quite often from readers of this blog and visitors to my site is “what gloves do you wear when you are shooting in the snow?” I’ve seen this question discussed on several other photography websites too, it’s not just ski and snowboard photogs who are in need of a decent pair of winter shooting gloves. Of course the problem is that we want to stay warm but also retain the use of our finger tips for operating the camera controls and most importantly, the shutter button. Wearing a think pair of winter gloves, it’s all too easy to miss a shot because you were not pressing down hard enough to squeeze the shutter through the thick material.
The Photog glove from POW solves this problem perfectly. The tips of the thumb and the first two fingers can be folded back and held out of the way by the ingenious implementation of a few small magnets. When it’s time to shoot, fold a couple of finger tips back for full dexterity and fire away. The palms of the gloves are also covered in a camera based pattern but this is not just aesthetic. The pattern is made from a very sticky rubber to give you great grip on your gear in the cold. The gloves are suggested for temperatures from 25 to 65 degrees F. If you plan on using them in even colder climates, they work very well as a glove liner which is how I tend to use them, wearing them inside a large glove such as the POW Assault.
So where can you get your soon-to-be-warmer hands on these gloves? If you live in a ski resort town check your local stores first but if you draw a blank you’ll be able to pick them up from backcountrystore.com
. Those of you up here with me in the great white Canadian north can get yours at www.luxusaccessories.com. If you are in Whistler they sell them at Evolution.
I’m going to mix things up here a bit, I was sorting out some old photos yesterday and came across this one that I really liked. Lake Wakatipu is just South if Queenstown in New Zealand.
Shot with a Canon 1DMKIIN, 70-200 2.8 at 130mm, f20.0, 1/50th, mirror lockup, remote release on a tripod.
Here’s a quick post on a question I get asked quite often. What kind of memory cards do I use?
I exclusively use the Sandisk Extreme III memory cards. When I first got into photography I had the 2GB vesrsions of this card and I have never experienced a single failure. I think it’s safe to say that most photographers pick one type of card and unless they experience any failures, most likely stick with that type/brand for a very long time. The thing that initially attracted me to these cards was that they are 
rated down to -25 degrees C. I have actually used these in far colder temperatures and as I said, so far so good. At the time the Extreme IV cards were not available and even though they are now, for me I dont think the download speed of UDMA technology is worth the price premium just yet.
These days I use the newer 30mb/s versions of the Extreme IIIs in my cameras. 4GB cards in my 1DMKIIN and 8GB cards in my 5DMKII. To download the cards I use the Sandisk Extreme USB2.0 card reader which I think is excellent value at only around $25. The tests performed on this site indicate that it is right up there with the fastest readers when combined with the Extreme cards. The other nice thing about the Sandisk cards is that it includes a copy of the VERY useful file rescue program RESCUEpro with each card. The program has saved me several times from accidental card formatting and has always succeeded in brining back my photos! It also works well on normal hard drives, not just the CF cards. This isn’t intended as any sort of comparison against other cards at all , i’m sure that other brands also have very reliable cards that can withstand similarly harsh conditions. But in my experience the Sandisk Extreme IIIs have been great in cold, damp or wet environments.
A couple of months ago I was invited to take part in the Deep Winter photo challenge here in Whistler, BC. The idea behind the competition is that 5 invited photographers assemble a team of riders to shoot with for 3 days and the resulting photos are combined into a slideshow of approximately 3 minutes. The shows are judged by a panel of photo editors from various magazines and all the shows are played to a crowd of hundreds of people at one of the hotels in Whistler. We shot the photos between the 6th and 8th of January and predictably for whistler, the conditions were incredibly challenging.
The first day was blowing a blizzard, quickly resulting in a lot of very very wet camera equipment. On the second day the freezing level went up to the alpine leaving all the fresh snow feeling like you were skiing through custard on top of that it was raining at some levels. The third day was somewhat nicer, a few rays of sunshine poked through but snow conditions were less than stellar and the alpine areas of the mountain remained closed due to avalanche danger.
Before the competition began i was somewhat apprehensive. Normally its a good days shooting if you get one or two great shots but to get enough shots to fill a 3 minute slide show in only 3 days was going to be a challenge. Add to that the unknown weather conditions and well…. you get the idea. It’s TOUGH! By the end of the third day we were exhausted and I only had a few hours to put together the show. In the end I was driving to the hotel to deliver the DVD while it was still burning in my laptop on the seat next to me!
I picked a couple of local skiers for my team , Leigh Powis and Pierrot Bernier. A bit of local knowledge was going to be a much needed asset for this comp. When it was all finished up I was pleased with what we achieved. The winners crown on the night went to Jordan Manley, with some incredible lifestyle work in his show and some great skiing by Chad Sayers. As part of my show I tried out a new rig to provide a different perspective on things. Mounting my Canon 5dMKII on a Manfrotto Magic arm and firing it remotely with a pocketwizard gives an interesting close up view of things. See below for the setup and example photo. This was certainly the toughest few days photography of my career, the atmosphere at the show in the evening was incredible. Its a great feeling to see a huge room full of people get so excited about photography!
I have been pretty busy the last few weeks so appologies on the lack of updates but expect a few more this coming week as I catch up on things!
Another question that comes up quite often from readers of this blog and visitors to my site is “what gloves do you wear when you are shooting in the snow?” I’ve seen this question discussed on several other photography websites too, it’s not just ski and snowboard photogs who are in need of a decent pair of winter shooting gloves. Of course the problem is that we want to stay warm but also retain the use of our finger tips for operating the camera controls and most importantly, the shutter button. Wearing a think pair of winter gloves, it’s all too easy to miss a shot because you were not pressing down hard enough to squeeze the shutter through the thick material.
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