Faction professional action sports photographer Dan Carr recently made his way to the North Island of Japan where the powder is dry and falls in silly amounts. Over the next week Dan will show us around the snowy areas of Hokkaido he vistied while photographing some of the ski worlds best athletes.
Day 1 & 2
A few months ago I got a call from Salomon asking if I would like to be part of a trip to Japan in February. The crew would be Sammy Carlson, Dane Tudor and Mike Henitiuk along with filmers from Salomon and also Poorboyz Productions. I was stoked! Japan was right up there on the list of places I wanted to go and I knew the proposed crew for the trip would be a good one.
We left Vancouver airport heading for Tokyo and then a flight from there to Sapporo on Hokkaido, Japan’s North Island. Trying to pack gear for long overseas trips like this is always tough. Airlines have all but done away with the old baggage allowances of 2x32kg bags, most now only allow 2x22kg (and sometimes even less). To transport ski equipment, camera equipment and personal items in 2x22 is impossible. My ski gear (skis, boots, poles, ski wear etc) weights in at 20KG on its own. I resign myself to the fact that I’m going to get charged for excess baggage either way. The important thing though is to try and keep it to 2 bags of 32kg. Anything over 32kg must be sent as freight!
For this trip I took a large rolling ski bag in which I packed my ski gear, a tripod, a shovel and probe, 2 lightstands and some ski touring equipment.
I also packed a Pelican 1550 hard case with my medium sized F-stop ICU. In the ICU I put my Elinchrom ranger battery pack and flash head, along with some pocketwizards and a couple of Nikon flashes. One thing that I have always been wary of is how conspicuous the pelican cases look. They can attract far too much attention if you are looking to slip though immigration and customs without being held up for a long time. There’s also the chance that they could get stolen because they scream, “I’ve got expensive gear in here”.
Pelican 1550 with medium F-Stop ICU
To combat this I put the pelican case inside a huge 150-liter duffel bag. This time I was using a First Ascent bag available from Eddie Bauer. In the same duffel bag I also pack a smaller North Face Duffel bag with all my clothes. That way if there is any problem with that bag being over the limit, I can easily take the clothing bag out and check that separately. It also makes things easier when the airline wants to get into the Pelican case to do security checks on the battery pack. They wont have to unpack all my clothes, just simply take the smaller bag out. I also packed an F-Stop Satori into the duffel to carry the lighting equipment that was in the Pelican case.
Worth mentioning too is that for every single flight I took on this trip , my name was called at the gate and I had to go and meet with the security personnel from the airline to discuss my battery pack. This is nothing new, happens all the time and I don’t blame them at all but make sure you are prepared for it. I wrote an article on my blog (http://dancarrphotography.com/blog/2009/08/29/flying-with-an-elinchrom-ranger/) about this and if I had not been taking my own advice I think I would have failed to get my bag on all the flights. Every single security agent thanked me profusely for being so well prepared with my paperwork.
For carryon I packed 2 cameras ( Canon 1dMKIV and Canon 5dMKII) plus 8 lenses into my black F-Stop Tilopa. I like the black Tilopa for flying with because it draws a lot less attention than my red Satori. I don’t want the airline personnel to take a second look at me because then they might decide to weigh my carryon where they would find that it’s over 3 times the allowable weight!! Discretion is key!
Anyway, outbound flights were pleasant and very quiet leaving us to take as many seats as we wanted. Connecting through Tokyo we had a small scare when they told us our plane to Sapporo was too small to take all our ski bags but half an hour of phone calls and we got that one sorted out and made it to our hotel in Sapporo which was to be home for the nest few days.
Next morning in Sapporo we met up with our guide for the next few weeks, Clayton from Black Diamond Lodge in Niseko (http://www.bdlodge.com). We were all pretty exhausted but the sun was shining and you never waste a day like that! Clayton took us to explore a local ski hill called Sapporo Kokusai. Once off the top of the lift there was literally untracked powder in every direction so we took a few laps to warm up and orientate ourselves. The sun didn’t last but Clayton pointed us down a valley away from the ski hill and told us to ski down there for a few miles until we came to a road where he would meet up with us. We didn’t see any more tracks for the rest of the afternoon! Great start to the trip.
Roadside lines near Sapporo.
You can find Dan on the internet at:
www.dancarrphotography.com
www.dancarrphotography.com/
www.twitter.com/dancarrphoto
