Over the years I’ve always been intrigued by the Red Bull Illume photo contest. The work that makes it to finals of this event is some of the greatest action sports photography from a laundry list of the best action sports and adventure photographers in the world. I always make a point of entering this contest and finding images in my collection to submit.

I first shot kayakers on this waterfall years ago but at the time just used natural light. We shot on a cloudy day, and at the time I was excited about the images, but looking back my excitement had faded and they weren’t super strong. They kayaking was still impressive, but the images were flat and weren’t anything special.

I had the idea towards the end of last summer to try and shoot the falls using a flash to create a more dynamic image that showcased the power of the water and the shape of the waterfall. At that time of year the water is to low to safely paddle so it needed to wait. I sat on the idea for the winter and waited until the spring when the water levels would be higher. 

This idea lived in my head for a while. When I first thought about it I was hurt, on crutches, and spending most of my time on the couch. With all this time to brainstorm I was able to come up with ideas I was excited about but had no ability to actually execute them. Therefore I sat on this one for a while and figured out the logistics of making it work.

2020 was an interesting winter. In British Columbia, the season came late with hardly any snowfall in December and ended earlier than expected with restrictions being put in place. However, there was still plenty of time to get after it. I’ve put together this slideshow to share my snowboarding work from 2020. Some of the images made it to print in various magazines, others have been used online, and some haven’t been seen at all.

For his 30th birthday, Tony Pavlantos made the goal to hike and snowboard 30,000 vertical feet on Mount Superior in Utah. This is no easy feat and it took the better part of a day to do this. He was up all night hiking and riding, and stopping for breaks in between to take a nap.

I didn’t have a particular plan to make an image in the ice cave. Ben Poechman and I planned to get out on Whistler Blackcomb on what was supposed to be a mostly sunny day. The idea was to shoot images on the giant ice blocks that fall off cornices in the spring. However, a storm came in and we were instead hanging out in a whiteout with nearly zero definition. We decided to go and check out the ice cave as it was nearby and we hadn’t been in a while.

After originally shooting some trail running using myself as the model in a recent post I was able to arrange an athlete to come out and shoot. We were delayed by rainy weather delayed for a bit but we finally got a nice window of sunshine.

This was another one of those days where we got skunked by the weather. We had some good conditions in the morning, but as we moved into the afternoon it started to cloud out with high clouds at first. Noticing this sun dog starting to be visible I knew I wanted to get a shot with the rider in front of it. We were already in a zone taking some fun laps that had a slope that lined up reasonably well. I wanted the sun dog to intercept the slope so the rider appeared in the middle.

Overall I live a generally active lifestyle, from getting out snowboarding, to hiking in the mountains, to even just biking around town. While not all overly physically demanding they keep me in decent shape. One thing I have always struggled with though is doing a regular exercise routine. This is fine in the middle of winter when I’m getting out nearly every day. But there are times when I find myself on the computer for days on end, editing photos, and realize I haven’t done anything physical. Normally this happens in the spring when I’m trying to finish up all my imagery from the winter, and in the fall when it starts getting rainy.