Behind the scenes of the Deep Winter Photo Challenge

A few weeks ago I was hired by Arcteryx to photograph behind the scenes action of the Deep Winter Photo Challenge. For those not familiar, Deep Winter is a photography competition held in Whistler every January, a month usually blessed with plenty of snowfall and deep snow conditions. Competing photographers and their teams of athletes are given 72 hours to shoot as much action, lifestyle, portrait and landscape as they can and then edit their best shots into a three to five-minute slide show.

Deep Winter has a formidable group of alumni winners (dubbed King or Queen of Storms) such as Paul Morrison, Blake Jorgensen, Jordan Manley, Robin O’Neill, and Ashley Barker (2015 Queen of Storms, who will be on assignment at Last Frontier in March 2016). Deep Winter, as well as the sister mountain bike photography event Deep Summer have helped spring board careers of many an action sports photographer over the last 10 years.

I was assigned to covering 24 year-old Israeli photographer Guy Fattal – a who recently came away with the King of the Dolomites photo award in 2015 – as well as the 2014 Queen of Storms, Zoya Lynch.

Having attended quite a few of these gala photo events over the years, I was excited to see how these teams work and to tell a sort of story of my own through the images gathered. The first eye-opener was how much the athletes contribute to the photographer’s success. This is true with any photo shoot, but especially when you’re on the hunt for dozens of locations around a ski resort and time is of the essence. It also helps to have an athlete who knows where to find the good snow and knows how to make themselves look good in the image. As Guy was new to Whistler, the reliance on his athletes was paramount.

The second lesson I quickly learned was to be prepared. These crews shoot from the first chair often into the sunset hours and beyond with a lot of stop-start throughout the day. That means they all need adequate food, water and warm clothing, just as if they were entering the backcountry for a big day of touring.

On the topic of backcountry, this was the first year that the Deep Winter rulebook was modified to allow shooting in Whistler Blackcomb’s backcountry terrain. One ski guide was assigned per team to make sure everyone was keeping safe beyond the boundaries. While some photographers may have expressed hesitation at spending precious time walking uphill, the fruits of the backcountry labour was clearly visible. Zoya was working with experienced freeskiers Dave and Tessa Treadway and watching them work their way down adjacent ridge lines to nail shot after shot was an impressive sight.

In the end it was local boy Chad Chomlack who came away with the King of Storms title with a soulful all black and white slide show edited by Whistler filmmaker Zac Moxley. Deep Winter judges look for emotion in the slideshows as much as image quality and crowd reaction and Chomlack had just the right amount of secret sauce to walk away with a cheque for $10,000.

For more information and full behind the scenes galleries, check out The Bird Blog.