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SBC Skier cover shot of Dane Tudor

Editorial work, Published, Site news 9 Responses »

Nov 172010

As a photographer there is very little that is more satisfying than walking into your local grocery store and seeing one of your images adorn the cover of your favorite ski magazine. When the issue in question is also the special 10th anniversary edition of the magazine it is even better!

This photo of Dane Tudor was shot in Haines, Alaska while I was up there last spring time shooting alongside the Poorboyz Productions crew. You can read all about my trip in this post HERE. The line that Dane is skiing was one that he had his eye on for a couple of weeks and it’s actually called “Too Short”. We’d scoped it out and taken photos of it from the heli a couple of times and as we past the time waiting for weather to clear in our hotel room Dane kept returning to the same photo over and over again, studying every detail and every angle and even marking his planned route down it. As with everything in Alaska though you have to be patient and wait for the conditions to be absolutely perfect. That means weather and snow and further still, snowpack stability. This particular line only gets a small amount of side lighting right at the end of the day so we needed a full clear day where no clouds rolled in. After 10 days of patchy conditions and prolonged down time we finally caught a break and Dane eased his way into this line. The snow that he found there was about the deepest we had seen during out time in Haines!

Dane studying and marking out the line that would eventually land him the cover shot

Photo data:

1/1250, iso 500 , f7.1

Shot with a 300mm f2.8 L IS on a Canon 1dMKIV

The other thing that gets me stoked about this shot is that Dane and I have been working together now for just over three years since before he really started to come into the limelight. Dane’s career has taken off over the last two years picking up Powder Magazine award for breakthrough performance of the year in 2010, ESPN performer of the year at the end of 2010 and Newschoolers best male performer too in 2009. Dane and I have a great partnership going on and last year saw us travel to Japan and Alaska together. Over the last few years since we met we have created several Salomon ads for their campaigns and had plenty of photos published in magazines all around the world. The one thing that eluded us to this point was a cover. This is Dane’s first cover and I’m glad that I got to be the one to shoot it. I’m sure there is a lot more to come from this partnership in the future and I’m excited to see where else in the world it’s going to take us.

I buy all of my photography gear from the guys at B&H Photo.

Equipment used for these images:

Canon 1dMKIV

Canon 300mm f2.8 L IS

Canon 1.4 teleconverter

Ad for Atomic Skis

Commercial work, Published 1 Response »

Oct 062010

This is an ad for Atomic Skis that I shot in Alaska last spring time. It was shot with a Canon 1DMKIV and a 300mm f2.8 L IS with a 1.4 teleconverter on it. The helicopter dropped me off on an opposite ridge to the line the guys were skiing on so I was quite some distance away. The skier in the shot is professional freeskier Tim Durtchi and the guys from Poorboyz Productions were also on hand to film the action for their movie Revolver. I knew Tim was going to do this trick off the cliff so I set up to shoot the sequence at 10fps. In the end, when it came to putting the whole sequence together I only needed to use every other frame from the sequence. Below is the original shot before it was turned into the ad.

Whistler Blackcomb ad campaign – Part 2

Commercial work, Published 2 Responses »

Sep 212010

The second part of the 2010/11 year Whistler Blackcomb ad campaign was shot back in April. I wrote about the first part HERE a couple of weeks ago. This time it was not specifically the mountains that were the subject, but the snowboarders that use it. This photo was to be used for the advertising in the major snowboard magazines around the world so we teamed up with some of the best riders out there. The Sandbox film crew came in with a few riders to film for their new snowboard movie called Now You Know and Red Bull brought in a second helicopter to shoot some follow cam footage.

Whistler Blackcomb ad campaign - Part 1

Commercial work, Published 5 Responses »

Aug 312010

As winter gets a little closer every day, the ski magazines begin to hit the shelves again. Always an exciting time of year for me as I begin to see the fruits of my labor from last season. The first one I’m posting up here was just published in Powder Magazine (though Australian readers may have seen it a few months ago in some mags over there too). This is the first in a series of ads that I shot in the spring time for the ski resort Whistler Blackcomb. Some of you will recognize Whistler as one of the host resorts for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and many other will be very familiar with WB simply because it is one of the most famous ski resort in the world, and luckily for me also my home mountain.

The first thing that is different about this shot is that it was deliberately not shot on a day with particularly nice weather. Whistler Blackcomb along with their design agency Origin Design had decided that they wanted to achieve a different look this year from the regular bluebird powder day photos that normally fronted their campaigns. They decided to go with a black and white design and so we decided it would be better to shoot on a slightly cloudy day to try and get a bit more character in the sky. On top of the cloudy stipulation we also needed fresh snow on the trees to make the perfect shot. Getting these things to come together was a bit of luck but after a couple of false starts we got some promising looking weather. I shot the image using a Canon 5dMKII. I also had a Canon 1DMKIV with me as backup but the full frame 21MP sensor of the 5DMKII was the best choice for the job for a couple of reasons. Firstly we were shooting at the end of the day so the light levels were quite low and secondly when you are hanging out of the side of a helicopter you need to use a much higher shutter speed than you normally would for a landscape photo due to all the vibrations. The final exposure was 1/2000 , f10, ISO640. 640 is pretty high but necessary to get a fast shutter speed and enough DOF in the low light. The full frame sensor of the 5DMKII produces stunning images even at ISO640. The lens I chose was the Canon 24-105mm f4 L IS because I wanted versatility in my compositions. We had a number of ideas on how we would frame the shot, and when the side of the helicopter has no door, there is no room for messing about trying to change lenses; versatility was key so the 24-105 was perfect and had IS to help with the vibrations from the engine.

Canon 5dMKII , 24-105mm f4 IS, 1/200 f10 ISO640

This is another of my favorite images from the shoot that did not end up getting used.

Prints of the image above are available, please inquire to orders@dancarrphotography.com

You can also view some of the ads that I shot for them last year in this blog post here.

DVD Cover – Poorboyz REVOLVER

Commercial work, Published 1 Response »

Aug 022010

Poorboyz Productions just dropped the trailer for their new movie REVOLVER.Â Along with the trailer they also released the DVD box art and I’m happy to say that the main image on the front of the box is one of my shots from my trip to Alaska this past spring time.Â The skier is Tim Durtchi and the photo was taken near Haines while we were up there with the awesome crew from Alaska Heliskiing.Â Tim skied a few turns down the face in the background and then launched a huge rodeo 720 off the wind-lip deep down into that shadowy area.

Revolver (Official Trailer) from Poor Boyz Productions on Vimeo.

Sequences re-visited from SBC Skier magazine

Editorial work, Photoshop tip, Published 5 Responses »

Jun 272010

Apologies for the lack of updates in the last couple of week, it’s been busy times here in Whistler.Â Today I’d like to post some sequences that were shot last year for SBC Skier magazine here in Canada.Â The first four were to be used for “Trick Tips” , where a pro skier describes how someone would go about performing that trick.Â The fifth sequence was not shot for that purpose, but it was run as a double page spread so I thought I’d throw it in the mix too.Â For anyone wanting to know how to create a sequence photo in photoshop I did a video tutorial on this a while back which I will re-post at the bottom of this article.Â I might re-do this tutorial over the summer to upgrade it to an HD version so if there is anything you want clarification on please leave a comment below so that I can address it in the re-make!

A key rule for shooting a sequence is that you have to be able to see the skier (or snowboarder/biker/skateboarder) ride away cleanly from their trick.Â This is the first thing that I think about when I want to shoot a sequence.Â Which angle will allow me to see them ride away? A sequence without the ride away is totally pointless so always think about this first.Â People often ask if I use a tripod too and the answer is no.Â You don’t need to if you have a steady hand.Â Sometimes I will use a monopod if I happen to have one with me but mostly it is all hand held.Â You will also save yourself hours of photoshopping if you frame the shot to include the start and finish of the riders trick all in one shot.Â DON’T zoom in on the rider and pan the camera as you will have to spend hours lining up the backgrounds. If you know where the rider is going to take off, and where they are going to land, then frame your shot to include both those points.Â The advantage of not using a tripod is that if you miss judge the landing point and the rider goes a little bit further than you anticipated you can pan at the last second to make sure you get those landing frames.Â As I mentioned, you will incur a little extra photoshop time having to line up the backgrounds but at least you will still get the shot.

To make this post a little more interesting I thought I would make a short animation of the sequences using Final Cut.Â Each frame in the sequence is on a separate layer in the photoshop file so I turned them off in sequence and saved a JPEG of the resulting image and then put them all into Final Cut! CLICK CLICK CLICK!!