70-200 f4 L IS – Initial thoghts

Those of you who follow this blog will remember that a couple of weeks ago I sold my beloved 70-200 2.8 L IS lens. The lens that has shot the majority of my ski photos for the last few years. I replaced it with it’s smaller and lighter brother the 70-200 f4 L IS. Having spent a couple of weeks using it now I thought I would confirm my initial suspicions. I LOVE this lens. As I sold my old lens I have no way of doing any direct comparisons but if that’s what you want to see then check …

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Back to my roots

Well as some of you know, I am originally from the UK. For a country that doesn’t really have any skiing of it’s own, there is a large and talented ski scene there and several great magazines. I often shoot stories for a magazine called Fall Line and this month I have an article about summer skiing in there with the added bonus of the cover photo too of rising UK star James Woods.

Out with the old and in with the……..smaller and lighter.

I think over the last 3 years, about 75% of the photos i have shot have been with the Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS. So today I sold it. Wait….what!??! Yep, it’s gone. You see I was thinking about it, when do I ever shoot that thing at 2.8? I’m always outside and 2.8 is quite a narrow DOF to hit a moving target with when you are not using auto focus (I don’t like using AF). The few times i did use it at wide’ish apertures where for portrait type stuff and then that was mostly at between 70mm …

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The snow finally comes to whistler.

Well those of us living up in BC have been waiting patiently for this all winter. The snow has now been falling for a few days and today was probably the deepest day I have ever seen when i headed up with the Poorboyz crew with Charley Ager and Brandon Kelly as they shoot for their new movie Every Day Is a Saturday. It made it almost impossible to make any headway with out sleds and even the tree skiing we shot was tough as the depth of the snow made it hard for the guys to keep momentum going! …

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Finalist: Pro Photographer Showdown

I’m pleased to announce that I have been chosen as a finalist in the prestigious Pro Photographer Showdown, hosted by Olympus!  I’ll be presenting a 9 minute slideshow of my work to a judging panel that consists of many of the top names in the action sport photography world!  This has always been an event that I enjoyed attending, I can’t quite believe its going to be me on stage in front of thousands of people now!  

What’s in the bag? – Part 1 – Lighting kit

Ok guys, you asked for it…..  I’m always getting people wandering about the gear I use so  without further delay here is part 1.  A quick video to show you my lighting kit in my Pelican 1610 case.  Below is also a list of whats in the case and some photos too. Bonus! In the case: Elinchrom Ranger RX Elinchrom Ranger “A” head 4 x Nikon SB80DX 4x Vivitar 285 4X Pocketwizard Multimax 4X Dual flash brackets Umbrella holders, mini ballheads and other lightstand accessories Many miles of cables and splitters and spares cables. Gaffer tape and flash gels

Skieur -Schuster is bigger in France

I got an e-mail this morning from Frank Raymond to say that I had the cover of the Skieur magazine in France. The photo was shot last winter in the Whistler backcountry with the Theory-3 crew while filming for their movie ” The Journal”. You can see another version of the shot from the magazine scan I posted from the Norweigen magazine yesterday. They are actually 2 different shots, I figured it would be nice to have a portrait and a landscape version of the shot so Joe did this trick a few times. It was a great day for …

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Fri Flyt – Big in Norway

One off shots in magazines are nice, but it’s even nicer when you get a collection of shots together for an article. Last month Fri Flyt , one of the major ski mags in Norway, ran a few of shots of mine in an article about filming in Whistler with Theory-3 media. The article was written by a good friend of mine, Andreas Amble. Check out his blog here. He is also a very talented graphic designer. Check out Theory-3s movie “The Journal” in all good ski stores or pick it up online from the website linked above.

Anatomy of a jib shoot.

A couple of days ago we took some time off sledding here in Whistler with the PBP crew to shoot a jib setup that I had found before the season started. The setup was a double bomb drop, one drop followed immediately by another one into some trees. I thought i’d take a bit of time to go over my thought processes when i’m shooting something like this. Unfortunately I can’t show you the final shot from the shoot but you’ll see it soon enough…. One of the first things you want to remember with this stuff is to try