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:
