FISHING

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What do professional snowboarders do before hitting big jumps at a sunset session? Exactly - go fishing. At least in Norway. Good style. Atti Holst and Fredrik Evensen taking care of dinner.

Fredrik Evensen und Atti Holst, professionelle Snowboarder in schwerer Vorbereitung auf den Sunset Shoot. Mit, genau - Fischen. Norwegen zeigt sich wieder einmal von seiner besten Seite.

TRAVEL DAY

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I went to Folgefonna in Norway to shoot snowboarding one more time this year. Two flights, one ferry and some miles with the rental car. It's around midsummer, should be interesting. But from what we've heard they got very little snow this year. Let's see...

from top left to bottom right: first flight in munich, second flight was hamburg to bergen, rental car (from rent a wreck) and the ferry to our final destination.

All photos taken with iPhone + the best camera app


Diesmal ging die Reise nach Folgefonna in Norwegen um ein weiteres Mal Snowboarden zu fotografieren. Es ist rund um Mittsommer, es sollte also ganz interessant hier werden.

YANKEES GAME

We went to see a Yankees game. It was mellow getting there by train, no super big crowds and yet the stadium filled with masses of people in quite a short time. Was impressive to see.

Everyone was having a good time, family picknick style. We had a blast!

Pipe Trip pt. 1

First Stop - North Star at Tahoe

Next Stop - Park City

in between - filming the rental car a.k.a. heavy dust test for the cameras

one of the many Motels we stayed at. 

We were glad that no dead bodies were found in the pool while we were there.

Here's the first of two posts on our recent road trip through California, Nevada and Utah. My almost annual spring snowboard trip to the u.s. turned into a halfpipe mission this year, plus lot of time on straight roads. More info, photos and video soon to follow.

iPad online photography portfolio

You're already sporting an iPad and need one more reason to justify your purchase? ;) I got you covered - my online portfolio christianbrecheis.com is iPad ready. Just point your mobile safari to my regular url and you'll be automatically taken to the iPad version. Much love to all you early adopters, nerds and fellow gadget lovers.
Thanks to APF for putting together killer photo and film portfolios.

March 2010 wrap-up

For shooting snowboarding the weather is a crucial factor. The past month was special, cause to sum up the weather conditions we had on all our trips, then I'm left to say it was consistently bad. But I've been on the road with great people, it was a lot of fun, good memories. Check out some photos from this month on the road.

Shayne Pospisil, Niseko, Japan.

Click the "Read more" link to see more photos...

SWATCH ProTeam

Every year the elite freeride skiers and snowboarders gather in Verbier, Switzerland to compete at the Verbier Extreme. It's a pretty insane show they put on, much respect! I went there to shoot the SWATCH ProTeam, but not while actually competing. My mission was to grab the athletes when ever possible / appropriate and shoot portraits and lifestyle. Not an easy task, they have a very tight schedule during the competition. Once they're done competing all the pressure seems to fall off them and they party like it's 1999. And there you are the next morning with some hung over guys in a random hotel lobby shooting portraits... haha

Here are some examples:

Seb Michaud

click "Read more>>" to see more photos

Japan Trip Slideshow

travel, city cruising, fog, pow, endless hours in cars, hot pow, night shred, icy conditions, food adventures. We had it all on our trip to Japan, but most of all we had fun. Many thanks to the riders Fredrik, Christophe, Shayne, Ai and Massa and of course Bernd and Testuso.

Slideshow HEAD Snowboards Japan Trip from Christian Brecheis on Vimeo.

 for maximum awesome,
go fullscreen and turn on the sound

Update - Just received the link to the little video we shot there. Camera & edit by Felix Urbauer and additional filming by the entire crew since we had a bunch of nifty GoPro cameras and Flip Cams. You can see me high five'en at 1:37 ;)

HEAD Japan 2010 – Exploring Nippon from HEAD Snowboards on Vimeo.

Hokkaido Snow

Our first day on the mountain. We met the rest of the crew and went riding today.

(click to enlarge)

stuff explosion, Fredrik and Christophe checking out some runs,
read those instructions!, Asahidake (probably?)

Christophe on the first run of the day...

(click the "read more" button)

arrived in Sapporo

The trip to Vancouver was great and seeing the Olympics was all time - but now it's about time to shoot some fun snowboarding with lot's of pow! Christophe and I arrived pretty late in Sapporo and went to the city for a little food adventure for dinner. It was fun walking around, lot's of snow, sounds, signs...

Tomorrow we're going to meet up with the rest of the crew and go shred!

Olympic Snowboard Men's Halfpipe

So that was the big day: the men's pipe event. I went up to the venue early to see the training. After a bus, boat and another bus ride I arrived in Cypress, bluebird and spring like temperatures. It was a long day for everyone who has arrived early and especially for the riders who hadn't had time to get out their boots for the entire day. It took until 8pm for the final to start (prime time on TV).

Vancouver, early morning

The pipe.

Fans; Tony Hawk was there too (bottom left)

Yep, Shaun stood up to the expectations and won.

What a week for the riders. Instead of getting 5 hours training for 5 days, they ended up having 3 days and 1,5 hours each max. Just 3 days before the event the pipe got rebuilt entirely. It was amazing to see how the guys flipped the switch to contest mode and went big regardless the little training time. Completely unacceptable was the TV coverage. Amplitude is a major judging criteria, the framing and the camera angels that were going on didn't help anyone watching to get an idea of what was happening exactly.

For me it was a great experience being at the games. I'm super stoked for Peetu winning silver.
Over and out for now, I'm heading on to the next trip.

arrived in Vancouver

After a 30h+ trip that included a lot of hanging at airports, I finally arrived in Vancouver at 3 at night. I took it easy and cruised town today. The entire city is like one giant event, banners and people everywhere.

Some street scenes from today...

Click the "read more" link below for more photos

Shooting Outdoor Sports

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I was shooting for a great new client recently, Ortovox - a company for mountain sports equipment. They're very dedicated to high quality products and R&D. So the several days shooting on location naturally took place in authentic environments. That meant serious hiking, iced up photo equipment, ropes, crevasses and so on.

You'll see the results during the winter 2010/11 in print advertising, catalogs and in store merch. Check out my work-blog to see a couple of pages of the catalog or check my website for some images in my new "Outdoor" category.
Thanks to everyone at Ortovox!

Catalog Cover

Ski Freeriding

Alpine Tour

Für den Bergsport-Equipment Hersteller Ortovox habe ich verschiedene Image Photos produziert, die für Katalog, POS Material und Print-Anzeigen eingesetzt werden. Die Mitarbeiter sind alle beigeisterte Sportler und testen die Produkte selbst. So war auch der Wunsch, dass die verschiedenen Shoots unter realistischen Bedingungen stattfinden. Das hieß stundenlanges Aufsteigen, eisüberzogene Fotoausrüstung, anseilen, Gletscherspalten und so weiter.
Die Fotos sind im kommenden Winter 2010/11 im Katalog, Handel und Anzeigen zu sehen. Einen Vorgeschmack mit ein paar Seiten des Katalogs gibt es auf meinem Work-Blog und auf meiner Webseite sind einige Fotos aus den Shoots in der neuen Kategorie "Outdoor" zu sehen.

Munich Snow

The first half of January had it all - 4am wake up calls to shooting until 4am, backcountry hiking to urban jibs. As for the urban stuff I tagged along with Marco Smolla and Fips Strauss to shoot trademark buildings and other fun stuff in downtown Munich for Red Bull. Check out Marco's blog and this clip by Vince (Isenseven).

German readers, go to Snowforce for a online article about this shoot.

Auf Snowforce gibt es einen Online-Artikel mit noch mehr Bildern.

Arosa Pipe

While the European Open finals were in full swing in Laax I needed to head over to Arosa, which is close by, to shoot a "Tool Time" article for Pleasure Mag with Mario Käppeli. Right above our jump was the pipe and the sun set beautifully right in the center of it.


While the issue featuring the Arosa shoot won't come out until March, Pleasure #84 just hit newsstands with another set of photos that I shot in Laax back in December: Portraits of Ethan Morgan for his interview, get a preview at the Forum Snowboard Blog or grab a copy.

Pleasure Photo Special 2010

Pleasure Snowboard Magazine's annual "Photo Special" just hit newsstands. It's a great issue, grab a copy if you see it. The image above is one of my photos I got in there. It's also available as a custom order poster. I'll update my post with the link where to order as soon as I got it.

NEW YEAR NEW WEBSITE

My portfolio website christianbrecheis.com is updated with new photos, new features and a new design. The photos load way faster and you can go through the galleries using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Of course it's still iPhone, Palm and Blackberry compatible.
There's a new category Outdoor Sports, check it out.

early season - Laax

click to enlarge the photos

Recently I went to Laax, Switzerland for a few days. The pipe is already open for some national teams to practice for the Olympics. The snow is man made and even though it's the last weekend of November, due to the warm temperatures it still feels like very early in the season on the mountain.

ON NEWSSTANDS NOW...

With snowboard magazines getting published mostly during the early season, at times you can have a lot of your work floating around out there at the same time. Here are some tear-sheets of what's on newsstands right now and what I've been blogging about earlier so I wanted to get some of the results up on the blog as well.

Whitelines, #86, GB
Rider: Christophe Schmidt

Slammer Magazine, 04/09, FIN
Rider: Sami Saarenpää - I wrote about our shoot here...

Free Magazine, December, CZ
Multi pages article about Talma, wrote about it earlier...

Document ,#59, GB
Rider: David Benedek. This shot and double cork sequence from one year earlier. Really good interview with David that highlight some special moments in his career.

Snowboard Magazine, December, USA
Rider: Eero Ettala. Some portraits for his interview, initially shot for Pleasure Mag in Germany.

Left page: Transworld Snowboard Magazine, USA. Shaun McKay in Arlberg, read the blog here...
Right page: Pleasure Magazin, #82, GER
A "how to" article with Christophe Schmidt. A multi page sequence massacre shot in Mammoth, check my travel post here...

It's good timing to see your photos printed and get motivated for the winter. Soon it's going to be early bird missions and hiking. And in a year from all the sweat and travel it took to take these photos is forgotten and magazines hit newsstands. People, buy more magazines!

WHERE FINLAND S SNOWBOARD ELITE COMES FROM

Finland has one of the best snowboard scenes I've witnessed. And some of the best riders in the world come from there as well, no coincidence. There's this resort called Talma just outside of Helsinki. Since it's dark most of the time in winter anyways, they've got lights so you can ride pretty much any time of the day. Naturally people go for a shred after work or school and sure enough you'll always run into someone you know. How great is that?

I've shot a story there this winter that got published in Pleasure Snowboard Magazine (Germany) and Snowstyle (Japan). Here are some tear-sheets, check out the full story in the mags - they're at newsstands now.

Pleasure (GER)

Snowstyle (JP)

Thank you: Ali, Eero, Rasmus, Iikka, Jani, Eric, Eiki, and the rest of the gang