SBC Surf Cover

Today I received a phone call and an email from photo editor Jeremy Koreski. He told me that a photo I took in Nicaragua this spring while shooting for Ripzone will be used on the summer cover on SBC Surf. The photo is of Australian transplant Shannon Brown, who now calls Tofino, British Columbia home. The photo was shot from the beach with a Canon EOS 1D Mark III and 600mm lens. This is my first surf cover and it has been one of my biggest goals since I started to surf surf a few years ago.

Appearance on Fuel TV's "The Daily Habit"

Check out The Daily Habit on August 11th starring Bjorn Leines, LNP, Nick Hamilton, Clayton Shoemaker and myself. We went on the show to promote winning the Team Shoot Out, the new issue of TWS and LNP's cover.

The Daily Habit is scheduled to air on Tuesday, August 11th at 6pm PST/9pm EST on Fuel TV and later again that evening at 9pm PST/12am EST. The show will rebroadcast the following day at 11:30am PST/2:30pm EST and again later at 2:30pm PST/5:30 EST. Check your local listings as it could vary from location to location. I will try and post a copy of the show once I get it.

Clayton, Bjorn, LNP, myself, Nick

LNP, Bjorn and the host Pat Parnell

LNP and his first TWS cover

Transworld Team Shootout Winner

Last week at the Transworld Snowboarding Magazine (click for more) head office in Carlsbad CA, photo editor Nick Hamilton and editor-in-chief Annie Fast finally announced the winners of the 1st Annual Team Shoot Out. Since this was all done in secret, neither of the teams knew what the others had built, what the photos looked like or how the video was edited until that night. The 4 teams gathered in the TWS gallery for first time photo and video viewing before the winner was announced. I must say, I was more than surprised when Nick unveiled my photo of LNP on the cover of the September issue and us (Rome Snowboards and Bear Mountain) as the winning team. I would like to thank everyone at Rome and Bear for making this all possible. You all kicked ass and helped make this event a success.

the day before I helped cut and mount the gallery photos

myself, Holly and Christian with TWS arts and crafts

my 10 photos submitted for judging

Frode Sandbech and his 10 photos

Andy Wright and his 10 photos

Video I shot of the awards

TWS Video of the awards

Rome Shootout Teaser

Here is the teaser to our Transworld Team Shootout video. Our team included LNP, Marie France Roy, Bjorn Leines, Will Lavigne and Eiki Helgason. I shot the photos, while John Cavan filmed and edited the video. Art Direction by Mike Paddock. We shot all this during 7 cold nights in April at Bear Mountain in California. A normal day during this shoot consisted of...

• 1pm wake up.
• 4pm drive to the hill and shuttle our camera gear up on snowcats.
• 5pm riders test out the feature for that night and the park crew dials in the changes needed.
• 10pm riders start hitting the features and I am almost set up.
• 12am start shooting.
• 4am we have the shots in the bag.
• 5am cook frozen pizza back at the house and mac off. (the act of emailing, facebooking and ichating on a mac book)
• 6am bed time.

The full video will be available on iTunes exclusively on July 27th. (not in available in Canada or Europe)

Transworld Team Shootout

There's a reason why you never saw this coming, why you never heard a word about it. Because it was all done in secret. TransWorld's Team Shoot Out had four of the best teams in snowboarding-Forum, DC, Burton and Rome-competing simultaneously at four separate resorts across the west.

Unlike any event in snowboarding, the all new Shoot Out focuses on creativity itself. As media leaders, TransWorld challenged the invited teams to produce the ultimate terrain park shoot and document it in video and photos to showcase the visual power of snowboarding. Let 'em build whatever they wanted to ride, shred it however they wanted and shoot it all in any way they saw fit. -TWS

• The contest goes down in a two week window, with seven days of build time and seven days of ride time.
• Each team consists of five riders, including one girl.
• A TWS photographer is assigned to each team. Burton (Frode Sandbech) DC (Andy Wright) Forum (Ian Ruhter) Rome (Scott Serfas)
• Each team must create a five minute final video (available on iTunes) and submit a gallery of ten photos for judging.
• Judging is broken into the event's three main components: video, photos, and overall creativity.
• The winning team is awarded the September cover of TWS.

Westbeach Classic Re-Visited

100 Issues of Concrete Powder Magazine

Concrete Powder Magazine has documented the progress of Canadian skateboarders and snowboarders since it first hit the shelves nearly 20 years ago. During that time, the magazine has undergone numerous format changes. With ripe beginnings as a glossy newsstand publication in 1990-91, to its subsequent volume 2 "relaunch" as a free large-format newsprint magazine in 1992, the changes both then and now are quite visible.

By 1994, CPM returned to the standard size, albeit continuing production with a staple-bound newsprint finish that was sure to stain your fingers while flipping its pages. During the fall of '97 Concrete Powder returned to being a glossy-printed magazine, like that of the first volume in the early 90's.

In June 2003 the final documentation of snowboarding occurred within the pages of Concrete Powder. The staples that held the magazine together since 1992 were finally dropped in December 2006 and CPM became a perfect bound publication under the new moniker, Concrete Skateboarding. - ed

Now go back to 1990 when I was just getting into snowboarding and I found it fun to document our progression. I would bring up my dad's old Minolta AE1 and shoot my friends riding. Each day the photos would get better and better until one day when I decided to send them in to this free newsprint magazine called Concrete Powder for possible publication. It wasn't long before my first shot was published, a 3 foot backside air of Reuben Kambeitz in the ditch at Blackcomb, circa 1992.

I knew absolutely nothing about photography. Exposure, focus, and film was all brand new to me, but I knew about snowboarding and I was having a great time shooting every chance I could.

With every submission to CPM my published photo rate went up and before I knew it I was driving to the office to help with layout. That’s right, the same guy that knew nothing about photography was now helping out with art direction and layout, something I knew even less about. I would photocopy prints, cut them out and glue them to the master book. One big photo on the left, and two smaller ones on the right. Ahhh, that looks good. Ha-ha. Well honestly that's about as real as it was back then. Remember, this was before the personal computer.

So with me basically laying out the mag, or a large portion of it, I found it easy to sneak in more and more of my photography. I was shooting cheap film and processing it at the drug store, with no idea how to properly focus the camera or even what slide film was. But that didn’t matter; I was helping at the mag so I was getting my shots in there.

Now my weekend riding buddies are getting noticed and their photos needed to go to other places. They showed up in different magazines and manufacturers ads and catalogues. I think before people knew what a good photo was I was improving to stay ahead of them. And before I knew it, the guys I was shooting (Devun Walsh, Kevin Sansalone and Rob Dow) were building a large name in the snowboarding world and I was standing there with the shots, leading me to even more published photos. It wasn't long until I had shots published in Transworld Snowboarding Magazine and Snowboarder Mag, the industries largest publications.

Its crazy, I still feel like that kid back in the day, doing what I love and hoping that no one realizes I don’t have a clue what I am doing. Well, I have a clue I guess. I know what slide film is, and I know I don’t need to shoot it anymore and I know how to focus my camera but really I am that same person shooting friends and their progression in the sport all while building some more photography skills. If it wasn’t for CPM, the experience I gained from working there, and all the people I met along the way I really don’t think I would be in the position I am today. I owe a great deal of my success to Richard Neuman and everyone at CPM for all the great help I received along the way. Thanks boys, you helped build a great career for me!

My 13 CPM covers, circa 1993-2001.

MacBook Pro now with "top notch display"

"What a difference six months makes. Back in January,

we wrote about the suitability of the screens in several

notebooks for editing photos in the field."

Canada Day with Endeavor Snowboards

Endeavor Snowboards and Air Hole was on top of Blackcomb at the Horstman Hut early cooking up pancakes with freshly que'd bacon and pounding back cold crisp cold ones. I can't think of a better way to spend Canada Day than with a group of friends doing what you love. For the full story check it out at TWS.com.

makin' bacon

Adam Chuntz

Johnny Lyall

Ripzone Spring Catalogue Shoot

For two weeks this June, the Ripzone team and I shot skate and surf action photos for their spring catalogue and upcoming advertising campaign. The skate section was shot in Miami's famous party town of South Beach over the course of four days before flying to Nicaragua for six days of shooting surf there.

local fisherman

watch out ladies, Sam is in town.

our guides Matt and Jerimiah were down for us, oops.