Travel Blog - Mammoth

On the road, traveling... Late season trip to shoot some more snowboarding. I'm in Mammoth Lakes, California with Christophe Schmidt and David Selbach. Here's some random travel photos of what's been going on so far:

Obligatory stop for each euro crew. The In-N-Out Burger.

from top left to bottom right: sunshine and palm tree cup. Getting lost in the desert, no joke. The flag at the pipe in Mammoth, it was really windy. Desert, a single tree.

People on the mountain dress funky and try hard to look cool (check out this btw.). But what about this dog? How cool is that? Just checking out what's going on in the hood from the balcony. (click to enlarge)

Thanks to David for this shot. Christophe is riding, I'm pushing the button.

What's next? I'll be showing some photos at the Still Life with Snow photo exhibit here in Mammoth on the 2nd of May. Since we already had powder, slush, too little vert in the pipe walls; we're hoping to get good conditions to finish up for what we came for, getting some pipe shots.

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Runner's World

Runner's World Magazine (Germany) ran one of my photos in their April 2009 issue. It can be found in my Active and Action Portfolio.

Italy - just some random ones

I'm currently editing through my photos from my recent trip to Italy. Good crew! Unfortunately we didn't find the best conditions over there. Here are just a couple of random photos:

Fredrik Evensen got a mustache

clouds, 'over the branch' and a slide

Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation. The Italy Edition.
The photo above does not sum up the mood of my recent trip to Italy at all. Though it had very odd moments, that's for sure.
Happy Easter!

SNOWSTYLE Cover and some Content

Snowstyle Magazine (Japan), April '09. Eero Ettala Cover and a little story about the trade shows SIA in Las Vegas and ISPO in Munich. The cover shot is a sweet mix of different light, check it out. click on the images to enlarge

Behind The Shot - Golf Series / Putting

You will find a bunch of Golf photos in my Active & Action Portfolio at christianbrecheis.com. These photos were produced using all kinds of lightning and gear. They have one consistency though: the action is real!
Here we avoided the usual images which often are over-posed, people waiving on the green with clubs over head and the bags all over the place. We paid attention to the 'details' the actual active golfer minds in order to create authentic photos.

Let's have a look on the putting photo of my Portfolio:

Pretty simple light set up, just to achieve fill in and to separate the subject to the backdrop a bit more.

What makes this image interesting is the shifted depth of field. It draws a line from the foreground - the hole to where the ball is, to the player. This is no Photoshop, it's done by using a so called tilt shift lens.

Getting a shot like this done requires planning and communication with the athlete. Moreover since the putting is real, timing was a big issue as well to capture the ball in the right spot.

So why not just set the whole thing up? Simple: because you won't get real emotions! Just check out the photo below, one frame later, when the ball actually went in. Priceless!

(click on the images to enlarge)

Bluebird at Arlberg

yeah, what a day. Blue sky, tons of snow and sunshine; some nice turns with the Fish board (...and the photo backpack) and great action captured. Some of those 1/1000 s moments that will stick in your memory.

panorama

hiking

out in the cold

You can't always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
(Mick Jagger)

I've been shooting with the People crew (People Creative) who were filming at Arlberg for their new movie project. It's been full on grey bird and cold, bad weather. But we had a good time! Getting some shots of fun riding.

Wille

Shaun

Nightsession at Seegrube

As if the early bird missions to Arlberg weren't enough, we went to Seegrube (Innsbruck) for a night session. Of course(!) it didn't stop snowing yet so we decided not to ride the pipe for which the resort actually opened the lift, but to plow some nice, untracked runs. It was more snowboarding than shooting and getting yourself in a great mood.

some shredders getting ready to drop in the pipe

whoa, late night pow pow

Snow in Arlberg

Austria got tons of snow! Sami Saarenpää from Finland, all around nice guy, came for a visit to go shoot in the Arlberg region. It was almost too much snow, hiking turned into quite a mission. Due to the high avalanche risk, we only went to shoot in small but safe zones. Some serious fun, chest deep powder shredding and some goofing around happend. Good times.