Click any of the photos Below to access the best of gallery

This year we were the official photographers for Tignes and ESPN, and thus had top level access to all sites and backstage. It requires a big team effort to cover this event, and they were teams in the team. i was working with my assistant Maxime Mouchet, and my friend and colleague Andy Parant was assisted by Greg Mistral, the four of us covering the event for Tignes. And with the addition of Christian Van Hanja and Vianney Tisseau, we were the ESPN Photohog Squad !

Click any of the photos below to access the best of gallery

Covering this event is definitely not an easy task… The briefs differs a little between Tignes and ESPN, we had to cover absolutely everything that goes on  – and there’s a lot going on, from the competitions, the Snow Mobile show, the life and animations in the X Fest (the X Games village), the behind the scene life at The Diva (the main hotel were all journalists and athletes are based) we were constantly running. Very long days from 8am to 12pm, with sandwiches (no time to stop, there’s always something happening or a card to download), stress, we all ended so exhausted, it took us a good 2 days of sleep to recharge the batteries at the end of the event.

Click any of the photos below to access the best of gallery

Despite all this stress, its a highly enjoyable event to cover, the perfect organization, the fantastic show and the performances from the world best athletes sure fueled our excitation. This year we’ve been blessed with a perfect weather and snow conditions, all the riders loving it and throwing down massive runs. Shaun White won the gold medal in snowboard slopestyle and halfpipe and had this cool sentence at the end of his runs « This is so much better than Aspen here !!! ».

Click any of the photos below to access the best of gallery

It was a new experience as well to work with a backstage staff, people helping with the keywording, the caption and getting our shots across the world asap. Because when you’re covering an event for ESPN, no matter how good your photos are, they’re worth nothing if you dont download them as soon as possible after each event, sort them, develop them, tag them with the right keywords, captions and metadatas and finally deliver them on time. The photos then live their lives,  are used online and on prints by medias worldwide, its a funny feeling because we’re loosing track and grip of this second life…

Click any of the photos below to access the best of gallery

I’m looking forward for next year event !

I’ll post here a link to Andy’s and Greg’s Best Of Gallery once they finish their editing…

Check the video below that sums up the spirit and the photoshoot

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

All in all, it took:
- several days to shoot the exteriors in April
- one week to shoot the women models in June
- one week to shoot the men models in June
- several weeks of post-production in July

I was acting as a technical advisor during the post production, following closely the incredible work of Raphael Cappodanno, the Artistic Director in charge of the campaign at MNSTR. A lot of time has been spent in front of the computer screen, but we were all stoked with the results.

Click the photo to access the gallery with sketches, final key visuals
and post-production break down example

I really enjoyed shooting this campaign, breaking down all required elements of the photos sketches, overcoming all the technical problems to produce the desired photos, mixing studio and exteriors shoots, with the post production always in mind.
And i really enjoyed the teamwork and the general vibe that went on with Raphael, Thierry (the studio owner), the models, the make up artists. All mind working hard as one to make those shots happen.

Not many updates on the references / blog pages lately because i couldnt do anything while the server move was on the way… And i’ve been busy shooting lately… We had the excellent European X-Games taking place in Tignes 2 weeks ago, i will post a gallery soon with the photos i took.

So loads of catch up to do, with a few articles / magazines being out, and some blog posts waiting to be written…

On a side note, we ended up our collaboration with Brice, hence the title of the post.
Working at 2 persons on such a passionate, labor intensive activity that photography is, is definitely not an easy task… We had too many differences of views and processes, so we decided to go our own ways.

Its a 5 day competition on the prestigious Golf du Mont d’Arbois, with celebrities, CEOs of big companies, kids, very enthusiast amateurs and pros, golfing on snow.

We had every possible weather conditions during the week, from Snow storm-i-cant-see-you-10-meters-from-here, to crisp sunrise with fresh snow, thus the shooting experience was  fantastic – we had total freedom from the organisation to shoot how we wanted  (can we do some black and whites ? sure, i’d love to have some black and whites…).

Click the behind the scene photo to access the gallery

Apart from a few top VIPs we had to do a special focus on, there was no need to shoot everyone, our mission was to give a feeling of the event. So we’ve been experimenting… from wide angle- crouched-on-the ground-get-everything-on-focus, to zoomed in-with-very-narrow-field-of-view-teleshots, with Brice becoming sometimes a Voice Activated Lightstand with a small softbox triggered wirelessly.
The post production also allowed us to bring the shots to the look we wanted, with some cool black and white pictures we envisioned at the time. That was our second time shooting golf (on snow… again), and we loved the experience.

Click the photo of Brice testing the softbox to access the gallery

At the same time during the week, my first photographic exhibition was taking place in the Guilhem Gallery. It went well, i had very positive feedback and even managed to sell a couple of prints – click the Rolls-Royce-parked-outside-the-gallery-picture underneith to check the virtual tour of the exposition.

Click the photo to check the virtual tour of the exposition

The free magazine they designed to promote the event was a big success, it was a big size classy magazine, printed very well on top quality paper. I had a lot of my photos in it, some on double pages between prestigious ads for Rolls Royce for instance… You can download the magazine by clicking on its cover underneith.

Click the cover to download the magazine

So overall it was a great week, with very happy clients – making us very happy photographers…

Time to get back to freestyle / freeride shoots now !

It will take place in Megève next week at the Galerie Guilhem, right in the center of town, from the 25th to the 31th of january.
I will be displaying 16 fine art prints, of sizes up to 80×55 centimeters. The talented people of Luminances.net did a fantastic job with the prints on Hahnemühle Fine art Baryta 325g paper (probably the best photo paper available) according to the Epson Digigraphy guidelines, and the results are simply outstanding.

I couldnt believe how wonderful they look !

Each print is from a limited edition, signed by me with a Hahnemühle certificate of authenticity and will be on sale at the gallery.

During this week, i’ll be photographing the Vacheron Constantin Snow Golf Cup, organised by the owner of the gallery.

The magazine promoting the event has just been released, it will be distributed at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, my photos are all over it, very well printed on a nice paper, besides ads for Rolls-Royce, Vacheron Constantin, Bose…

Come and check the Exposition if you can, entrance is free of course, and nothing beats – as far as viewing photographies goes -  real big top quality prints  in a very nice gallery…
The gallery is open from 10h to 13h and from 15h to 20h.

The results are now live on PopPhoto.com, and although we didnt win, i ended up in the final 5 photographers of the Extreme Category.
You can see the Extreme results page with the winning photography by clicking on the photo below.

click on the photo to access the gallery

Start of the season is also the right moment to freshen up the portraits of all the riders / staff of the brand.

So It was portrait time…  I confess i really like this photography exercise. A lot of things are required to make successful portraits:

- setting up, tweaking, experimenting with your lights. Photographer Dom Daher kindly let me his Profoto 7b pack, torch and soft box, so coupled with my elinchrom pack, i had the power to turn day into night. No Studio required, just being creative, and having so much fun experimenting…

- Being constantly aware of whats happening around you, especially regarding the light and the mood of your models – when you’re not in light controlled environment fantastic opportunities are happening constantly.

- and more important than anything having a cool interactive relation with your subjects. No matter how good your composition and your light setup are, if you dont have the relation with your subject, i feel you’ll never get the right emotion / smiles / expression. You need to be (at least) two to make a cool portrait – you and your subject.

Colby James West summed it for me, with this sentence at our last photoshoot « Hey Shu, how are we gonna make something stunning together today ? »

Sure with this attitude, it gets way easier to do cool things…

click on the photo to access the gallery

In case you’re looking for a cool gift for your family, friends or yourself, why not getting a fine quality print from our Portfolios pictures ? Its Christmas soon, and we’re happy to give you a special limited reduction coupon of 20%.

To use it when you’re in the portfolios, click on one of the picture, on the buy print button, and at step 2 (Check Out) just enter the code 2274A6

Prints are of very good quality, well wrapped & protected and sent worldwide.

The reduction coupon will expire on December 31th…

G:“Hi man, what are you planning for next week?”

Me:“Nothing sure, but I will probably be in Tignes, I have to fix things in my flat before the winter season”

G:“Ok, you’re right, fix you apartment” and he hang up…

I’ve known Guerlain for a while now, apart from being a good friend and a skier I often take photos with, he’s a top athlete (4x Freeride Ski World Champion, 2009 World Champion of Car Rallye Raid), and the General Manager of the ski Company CoreUPT …

So I knew he was on a joke and immediately called him back:

Me:“Ok, so where do we go??”

G:“Patagonia! I just received an email from a heliski company in Chili (Andes Heliboarding ), they invite us onboard this boat for a week of heliski photoshoot on top of volcanoes, are you available? We’re leaving next week! »

Hell yeah I’m available !

A few phone calls and emails later, with the trip reportage pre-booked on several big magazines (print and online), we left with Guerlain and Antoine Frioux (the man behind Mad in France, the latest video from SVP Production , and who also does the videos for CoreUPT ) to what sounded the dream assignment.

Indeed it was … but it didn’t turn out exactly as we first thought it would. Mother Nature just showed us what amazing Patagonia looks like with bad weather.

Click Any of the photos Below to access the gallery

We didn’t see the sun at all during our 7-days-trip in Patagonia with a heavy cloud coverage – so it was impossible to reach the summits with the helicopters to ski.

Nevertheless, the boat was truly incredible, one of the 10th best exploration vessel in the world, with very luxury equipments, a top chef who made our food experience unique, an incredibly warm welcoming crew, tons of toys onboard and 2 helicopters on the roof deck.

The crew did their best to entertain us … and we have been very well entertained!

Doing excursions with their Navy Seals Zodiac (these boats can go up to 120km/h with seats featuring independent shock absorption system), heli kayaking on remote rivers (the helicopters drop us with inflatable kayaks equipments and come back to pick us up), heli gourmet dining (same principle, the helis drops the Chef and the crew in remote places before us so when we arrived tables and fantastic food is awaiting us in amazing wild locations), fishing, hot springs swimming, local cocktails making…

Thanks to the exploration vessel and the helicopters we were discovering some of the remote Chilean Patagonian Fjords – nature and forest are so dense there that very few people have reached those spots. The boat was sailing overnight, so we were getting up in a new place every morning. Landscapes were breathtaking, even if it was raining everyday and we just had glimpses of the fantastic possibilities… It has been a tease all week, and we finally saw the sun on our last day, when we arrived back at our boarding port, Puerto Montt – just 1 hour before catching the flight back home.

Despite coming back empty handed on the ski photo side, we had a fantastic experience, and flew back home with big smiles. We really liked what we saw from Patagonia, it reminds me a lot of the incredible beauty of New-Zealand.
When the sun is not available, you can still be photographically creative on rainy days.

Click Any of the photos Above to access the gallery

On a tech side, only 2 photos of this gallery went through post-production – I really needed to maximize the available light on those ones, will you guess which ones?

Tristan

Well it definitely takes sometimes to get something worthy, its not always easy to shoot it without loosing attention to your main photoshoot, and it sure takes skills to do a nice edit… we’re still in the learning.

Meanwhile here is a funny behind the scene video filmed and edited by my good friends of SVP Production – They’re the ones doing the CoreUPT videos.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

And the photo i mention in the video, the one i was happy with, is this one underneith of Colby James West – we couldnt include it in the vid at the time. click it to see it bigger.