We are unstoppable. Everytime we strap on a snowboard, it's hammers left and right. People are amazed when we show up to a spot and there's seamless tricks being stomped time and time again.
Ok, that's total bull, and although there are some incredible athletes that come out and shoot with me, I think my camera must have some kind of crazy curse attached to it because whenever we're shooting something legit that is not the terrain park, nobody lands anything. Or maybe if we're lucky we'll get one or two shots. Speaking with a lot of other videographers and photographers, I've come to learn that this is actually pretty normal, and if you're doing a next level feature, the precision required to stomp hammers must also be next level, so it's understandable when it takes a rider a half-dozen attempts before they can put it down bolts. Nevertheless, when I'm sitting across the ridge, or at the bottom of a handrail, or perched in a tree, freezing my butt off waiting for a gap in the cloud cover so we can get a decent looking shot, it gets somewhat disappointing when everything looks good, until the tomahawk, or the upright snag, or the bomb-hole buck at the end.
Even though it's frustrating, and sometimes feels like a big waste of time, as soon as Uri landed his first F/S 360 yesterday, everyone in the crew was so pumped, it made all the slams, and the hike, and shoveling, and dealing with the blizzard, and waiting for visibility all worth it, and it also makes the ibuprofen go down just a little bit easier at the end of the day. That's one of the things that I like so much about action sports. For those involved, they understand that there's really nothing more satisfying than sticking a trick after a bunch of failed attempts. The Little Engine That Could had it right, and if you can beat that mental game that tries to keep you on the ground, pretty soon it's going to be another stomped landing, and your camera guy will probably pee his pants because he's so stoked to actually have recorded something where the person landed.
I'm just super stoked that Uriel Ruvalcaba,
Mo Jennings, and
Andy Earl were so pumped to come out and session the feature. And special thanks to Mr. Shelby Burton for coming up on Monday with Andy and getting the jump mostly built. A lot of people don't realize how much effort goes into building a jump in the backcountry. We don't have a $1 Million snowcat to push several thousand pounds of snow into a pile and then shape the lip to precision, so we resort to avalanche shovels and our boards/skis.
40 lbs of camera equipment, my snowboard, shovel, avalanche probe, extra layering, and lunch makes for a moderately heavy load, but it's cool because when you take the extra time to generate a quality product, people tend to be a little more stoked on your brand/content/project. In a society that is less focused on quality and more interested in quantity (especially with downloadable and web-based media content), a little extra love and attention goes a long way with setting your product apart from the competition. I hope you guys enjoy this post, and get ready for Episode Three of Wasatch: The Official Production Podcast, dropping into iTunes sometime this coming week. Don't forget to become a fan on Facebook by clicking here, and also if you don't want to download each episode to your computer (what are you, a dinosaur?), then you can watch every new episode on the Wasatch Vimeo Channel. Enjoy these photos, and the fact that some of them are screenshots from some of the video outtakes.
