Adventures, Mistakes and Mischief: Snowboard Racing Photography
- Ted Emes
- Jan 8
- 3 min read
As you may know from the my website bio, I love kitesurfing.
As much as I would love to train my photography skills on the water right now, we just crossed over into official winter and the mountains along the sea to sky corridor have come alive.
My son who is in his last year of high school sports, had a snowboard race up on Blackcomb Mountain and this would probably be my only chance to watch and snap a photo of him doing it. Given that I'm always learning and tinkering, I decided to prep a little more than the the usual point and shoot.
The Snowboard Photography Session: How It Went Down
I have only taken photos of one other snowboarder on a backcountry tour. For this snowboard photography session, I was going to have to do a little more work - like, find the race course, and coordinate with a teenager on when he races. Fingers crossed!
First I struggled a bit in locating the actual race course which was not listed anywhere officially on the Whistler-Blackcomb website. Naturally my son did not know exactly where it was either other than "off the Jersey Cream chair" on Blackcomb Mountain.
I spotted the race course while going up the mountain and eyeballed shooting locations. Naturally missed them on the first ski down, so I went back up.
Skied the hardest of ice slopes ever on the way down, lost my inside ski and did a mini-yard sale. Fingers crossed that I didn't land on the camera bundled up in my puffy jacket inside my ski pack.
Got my ski back on and followed the loud group of grommets to the course entrance. Casually went through like I owned the place because I needed to get to the skiers left of the course which was accessible from merging run above. Tip: Hang your camera off your hip, the longer lens tells people you're 'official'.
Found a location near the end of the race course and proceeded to set up a photography nest with my kit. I noticed I kept falling over from post-holing through the snow while trying shoot. Ugggg...ok....got into the prone position down in the snow to stabilize myself.
Ran several test photos at different ISOs, focal points and speeds. My reading glasses kept fogging up in the now mixed snow and rain coming down, so I packed up my nest and headed to the Glacier lodge to review the pictures.
The photo review (and much needed boot removal) told me that the low and flat light was eliminating all sense of depth, so I would need to bracket my son between two race gates or just coming around a single gate.
Returned to the nest and set up again. Decided on which race gate I would focus the camera on and practiced overriding the auto focus with manual adjustments to ensure a sharper image.
Worked on watching the riders start their run to get a sense of their movements and brought the camera up to shoot as they approached the target location. I found it much easier to track the racers after getting a little sense of how they would ride.
Sent a text to my son to remind him to let me know when he was lining up at the start gate. Threw my phone down in the snow when I spotted his jacket. Tracked, focused (well tried to anyway) and snapped a few.
Messaged him again to let me know when he was lining up for his second run, got a phone call that they were only doing one. Relieved I put in the work well ahead of his run. Face palmed when he told me he shut off his data, so my message was never received.
Celebrated his run with a $50.00 lunch at Glacier Creek Lodge: Two cheeseburgers, shared fries and water--thanks Vail Corp. Off to 7th heaven to finish out the day.
The Day's Lessons
Today's experience reminds me of a simple saying my old racing coach use to say: "Don't race something you haven't trained on." Getting out there and doing the prep work was critical in getting composed for the moment that just popped up. Not only was the camera in a better position to take the shot (physically and settings) but it made me envision the potential photo long before the moment arrived. It's interesting to experience a moment in reality that I envisioned possibly happening.
Is it technically the best photo ever? No, not even close, but I do feel that I captured a precise moment of my son's life doing something he really enjoys and feels good about.
