Editorial work » Dan Carr Photography - Photography Product Reviews + Ski, Snowboard and adventure photography tips

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

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!!