Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Winter X 15

The past couple weeks have been pretty hectic with work taking me to Houston, Texas for a gorgeous wedding and then to Aspen, CO for Winter X 15. Unfortunately, I can't share any photographs from the wedding, but I can share some work from my week up in the mountain sunshine with a fantastic team of people from ESPN Action Sports.

For those of you who haven't ever been to the X games, you're missing out. If you want to have your brain completely blown away by some high flyin', adrenaline thirsty nutcases that have more than a few screws loose, this is the event for you. These guys are insanely athletic and pull off tricks that are just mind boggling. I've shot Winter X three times now and it never gets old as the athletes push the limits every year by busting out new tricks, rocking new style (see Shaun White), and flat out going BIG and FAST in everything they do. Sprinkle in a crowd of the most colorful youngsters you've ever seen and you have the makings for one of the most entertaining weeks in the Rocky Mountains every year.

We were very fortunate and had awesome weather all week long. Wednesday and Thursday were unbelievably gorgeous, followed by Friday and Saturday which were borderline hot. I swear we could have worked in shorts if we wanted to. Overcast skies rolled in on Sunday and took away the beautiful afternoon light we had been spoiled with earlier in the week, but it provided a nice change in mood of the images and changed things up a bit.

I worked with a rockin' team of people including fellow photographers (and partners in crime) Mark Kohlman and Josh Duplechian, and I think the three of us made a great portfolio of photographs for the website. We worked our tails off, but we managed to keep things light the entire week. Hiking around a mountain all day definitely takes it's toll on your body, but there is so much variety around you that you can't help but want to be out making photographs all the time. On the back end of things all the writers and editors, including Brett Wilhelm of Rich Clarkson and Associates, kept the content flowing to the website in nearly real time because we were using Canon and Nikon wireless transmitters to send our photographs to the production trailers in the parking lots from the base of the mountain.

Lastly, I can't thank Mary Fenton, Dave Finger and Micah Abrams enough for hiring me to shoot this event for ESPN Action Sports. They're awesome people to work with and it's an event that I always look forward to shooting given the subject matter and the awesome team of people with whom I work.

It was an amazing week and I made some new pictures that I hope you'll enjoy as much as I enjoyed making them.

Cheers,

TSB2


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