the story behind the photo Aurelien Ducroz lincoln loop

I took this shot during the 2009 Nissan Winter Outdoor Games with 2009 and 2011 Freeride World Champion, chamoniard Aurélien Ducroz.

We were looking for a good freeride spot for the film crew, with drops, nice powder landings and backdrops – and good light. Getting nice backdrops is not very hard in Chamonix, as all the mountains are stunning beautiful.

But Getting a combo of all that the same time needs some scooping. Lucky for me in my team there were several chamoniards (Stephane Dan, Aurelien Ducroz, Babs Charlet) who knew their mountains so well, that they know the exact time to get to each spot to get the good snow and the good light with all type of conditions. So after some discussions among them, I just had to follow, discovering the incredible spots (that was my first time skiing in Chamonix and I instantly got in mad love with the place) with my guides.

The Nissan Outdoor Games is a full on race against time to produce content and we had to get killer shots as quickly as possible, so Aurelien was very motivated to throw a big jump on the first and only try..

And man, it was massiv. this jump is called a Lincoln Loop (the skier is doing a complete sideway rotation over himself), and was around 17 meters high and 25 meters long.
We waited for one hour though for the clouds to lower enough to reveal the Aiguille Verte and the Aiguille du Dru of the beautiful Mont Blanc Range. Everyone (cameramen, photographs, guides, atheletes) was sat at his spot on the snow, waiting (shouting at each other from times to times). There was times I thought the cloud line would never lower. But at the end it was well worth the wait…

 The Tech corner: 19/02/2009 – Canon 50D + 10-22mm@20mm – 1/1600 f10 iso 400