Cold Light At Lake Louise
Minus eighteen, two frozen batteries, and one snowboarder willing to go again.
We rode the first chair with the thermometer at minus eighteen, which in practical terms means your batteries last about a third as long and your fingers stop negotiating after twenty minutes. I keep spares against my chest under two layers and rotate them like a relay team.
Action work in the mountains is really pre-production disguised as spontaneity. We spent the first hour not shooting at all — just looking at the run, watching where the light fell, finding a lip with clean sky behind it so the rider would separate instead of disappearing into a grey slope.
“Cold is not the enemy. Cold is the reason the air is that clear and the light is that clean.”
— Marc Pagani
Once we had the spot, it was simple and brutal: he hikes, he drops, I shoot, we look, we adjust, he hikes again. Six runs. On the sixth the light came in low and hard across the snow, he hit the lip exactly on the mark, and the whole thing finally looked the way it had felt all morning.
Then we went and drank coffee until we could feel our hands again. That's the job.
Where It Was Shot
Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada
51.4254° , -116.1773°
Shot on location in 2015. Follow the map to see exactly where this frame was made.
Next Story