Lumber - Snowboarder Japan

Lumber story pulled from Snowboarder Magazine Japan, published November 2008.

The idea behind this photo special was to feature an assortment of snowboarding action photos captured during 2008 on wooden obstacles. Trees, stumps, logs and dilapidated buildings made for some interesting images and a variety of technical snowboarding maneuvers. It also gave me the chance as photographer to drag a lot of gear into the woods and give each image the set-up time it deserved.

As I was putting the photos together and presenting the collection to the editors, they asked if I would like to talk about each rider individually, plus have the athletes say a few words about filming and shooting on this type of terrain. Japanese readers love to know every detail concerning the rider, what they think about snowboarding, their gear, and my thoughts on how we choose the terrain and what went into capturing each shot. Any and every factoid we could muster up, the better !

I used the Canon 1D Mark III to capture the action shots, along with a variety of strobes and small flashes. Most of the obstacles were a short distance from the road, so I had the ability to access a lot of equipment from right out the back of the car. It's always a blessing to have all your lights available so you can experiment and come up with the best possible image.

Enjoy, Blotto