Personal project shooting road biking with Emily Slaco on a sunny summer morning on the Duffy.

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.

When going out to shoot photos, I keep a few things in mind to create the best possible photo I can. In some situations, I plan out an exact image, and in other cases, I try to work on the fly and shoot things as they adapt and change around me.