White Book


If you go down to the shops today and come across an Ellis Brigham ‘ white book’ , well , thats what this blog is about . Earlier this year I was with the Ellis Brigham team shooting ski action and fashion in Khutai Austria. It was an 8 day shoot and I had been really looking forward to it. Thats is, before I sprained my knee and had a slight tear of my L medial CL 6 weeks before going out there. So going from walking with difficulty to skiing in 6 weeks and pulling the key winter shoot for a large company like Ellis Brigham out of the bag was a challenge. I’m mostly a climber/mountaineer and dabble in things like mountain biking, kite surfing, and skiing, doing them but to a limited standard. So that limited standard in skiing isn’t going to be helped by not having a functioning L knee.

The brief of the shoot was to capture high mountain ski action with big mountain backgrounds as well as capture ski fashion . We had LEDs , smoke bombs, multiple flash units and by ‘eck we were going to use them . Even if it did mean setting of the fire alarms in one of the nearby shops and the owner coming out asking ‘wtf is going on !!’ , time for a swift get away .

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Going into a shoot like this there are so many amazing ski shots out there thats it’s a challenge to think of different ways to shoot  a subject thats been shot so many times by talented photographers . I was hoping to try and find some fresh perspectives and use some unusual angles to give something fresh, don’t know if I managed it but it’s a good thing to try and see things differently , even if what you end up getting is similar to whats been done before, after all , there’s only so many ways you can shoot a skier coming down a hill. Luckily the athletes I was working with were outstanding and able to translate exactly what I had in my mind into action on the hill .

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This was shot on day 1 and I was pleased with the result. Steve Bailey is a snowboard legend and a machine at building jumps anywhere and everywhere. Here he is in action,  Canon 8-15 fisheye and Canon 1 D c.

Pam Thorburn is a giant slalom and skicross athlete, general all round crusher and was nursing a torn meniscus in her L knee and a fractured knuckle in her R hand and a trapped nerve in her neck. She was walking with a crutch but when on skis she skied better than 99% of people , even with only 1 functioning leg !! . Nice to see she made the front cover : )

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Mostly days in the Alps are spent in blue skies and when the weather is poor or visibility low , you go do something else. Fortunately , the one day we had a bit of cloud it gave us a little bit of atmosphere to work with , I think cloud helps to give a sense of height, and awe with mountains as the summit comes in and out of cloud and the light is diffuse with less shadows.

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It was the teams first time in this resort so we were all learning the terrain and I was trying to find good backdrops and see what time of day the light worked best . This little shot was taken at a place I knew would work with the sun just before it dipped behind the mountain , I was wanting to get the glaciated terrain in shadow but the skier in the light, think I was 5 mins late though as the sun had just dipped down a touch too low for the shot and created more shadow than I wanted .

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The temperature was about 20C, not ideal for shooting a winter catalogue and we were in T shirts when in the sun shooting , the South facing slopes were burnt back to barren grassy hillside so we had to shoot on the N facing slopes which meant I was shooting into the sun, I used the ELB 400 and Elinchrom triggers to use high shutter speeds and wide aperture for some of the fashion stuff

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On a long shoot like this , its important to have a laugh and Amy and Pam did a cool air guitar shoot with AC/DC playing on my iPhone to give a bit of authentic rock anthem background for them to strut their stuff . Amy went into full on ‘Jimi Hendrix mode at Monterey’ and even tried to set fire to her skies with lighter fuel , awesome !, the girl can rock .

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Now , I know when I posted some pics from the shoot it all looks easy , and I’m hanging out with beautiful women and taking a few pics here and there but this shoot was really hard both physically and mentally . Not just the challenge of thinking creatively all day , with virtually no break. When the athletes are not  being shot they can chill and take time out , in fact everyone can take time out except me so there’s definitely a point where your brain just gets fried and thats when to call it a day and come back fresh the next day , here’s out creative director Dave showing what a hard life it is

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Shooting on piste I was wanting a shot where the spray of the snow obliterates everything except the logo of the brand , this is sort of what I was trying to get , I quite like the shot, see what you think

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The final shot was again on one of Steve Baileys jumps, as it was so warm the reservoir was water rather than ice with no snow around so was a bit of an usual juxtaposition of colours and angles. I like the orange against blue look, nice and contrasty.

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Thanks for taking the time to read ,  another blog coming soon about the winter shoot for Ellis Brigham.

 

Thanks to F-stop gear for making great camera bags and Elinchrom for the best portable light systems around for adventure sports photographers.