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I was lucky enough to be invited to ski in the Salt Lake Shootout photo contest this year.  Eight photographers and 20 athletes battle it out for for the best shots of the contest.  With heavy hitters like Julian Carr and Cody Barnhill throwing down the contest is sure to produce some sick images.  I was assigned to ski at Brighton the first two days.

Day one I shot with Erlend Haugen, a norwegian photographer that is currently living in Chamonix,  France and Jesse Bryan a strong alpine skier from Snowbird. We had a super bluebird day in the backcountry surrounding Brighton.  Erlend is a great photographer and was ridiculously easy to work.  Good people and good skiing generally equals a great day and today was no exception. We skied some nice sun/shade pow lines off of Mount Tuscarora and then moved to a zone beneath Mount Tuscarora to hit some cliffs.  Jesse and I each hit some smallish (under 30) cliffs.  Finally as the light changed we moved to the northwest face of Millicent peak and got some nice steep pow shots.  Great day of shooting.

Day two I shot with Kevin Winzler a photographer from Salt Lake and Jason West, a good friend and an alpine/tele shredder(today he was on alpine gear, sell-out!). It was snowing all day so we had to work to get some shots with the lack of light.  Luckily Kevin is a master of lighting and showed up with a full arsenal of flashes and strobes. First we skied some pow off of pioneer ridge.  We found a small cliff to session and Kevin set the his flashes.

JW guinea pigs it.  While this cliff is not very big,  Jason made it a much larger air, landing well out of the picture.  Jason gave the landing two thumbs up so I could help but front flip it.  Jason and I each hit the cliff twice until there were no soft landings left and then moved on.  Next we moved back inbounds and Kevin broke out the strobes.

Kevin shooting,  Jason getting powlicious under the strobe.

We ended up shooting this zone until dark.  Kevin got some really nice shots,  you can check them out HERE, they are the shots around the rocks that look like night or evening light.  Long day of storm riding and working to find cool shots with two rad guys.  Kevin is a really amazing photographer and I was lucky to get paired with him for two days!  Next, two days at Alta, one with Kevin and one with Liam Doran. Oh yeah, and a bunch more snow…