Deep Winter Photo Challenge: Colin Adair

I was invited to participate in the Deep Winter Photo Challenge in Whistler this year. It's a really great event that I have attended for the last few years and even judged it one year. The concept is simple: shoot for three days on Whistler and Blackcomb mountains during regular hours and then present a slideshow before an audience of about 1000 people on the next day. The reality is not so simple. The amount of time spent planning and organizing is only outdone by the stress and fatigue of shooting and editing. Overall it was a ton of fun and I would definitely do it again.

My show was based on an idea I had last year. I wanted to highlight each of the past 3 decades of snowboarding in 3 successive days. With Deep Winter being a 3 day shoot, it was a good fit. At the same time, my concept didn't really follow the theme and judging criteria for the event so I knew that would hurt me on the judging side. But I really liked the idea and wanted to do a slideshow that was fun and different and not the same old formula of photos set to music.

Once I started planning it and collecting all the gear it really started to dawn on me how big of a shoot I was undertaking by myself. There was definitely some moments of panic. Competing against Jordan Manley and Paul Morrison who have both won the event and partcipated in many slideshow events before was intimidating. Once we started shooting however, it all started to fall into place. The riders were amazing and we had a lot of fun. In hindsight there are a lot of things I would have done differently but that's life!

I have to give major credit to my crew, the riders, Eric Greene, Matt Belzile, Don Hore, Ryan Tiene, Andrew Geeves, and Rube Goldberg, photo assistant Kieran Brownie, editor Jon Conway and special thanks to Dennis Bannock for the voice over. Also thanks to Whistler/Blackcomb and the other photographers who did an amazing job: Jordan Manley, Paul Morrison, Nicolas Teichrob and Brian Hockenstein, I encourage you to search out their shows and see for yourself.

Here is my show: