This was an awesome project to be a part of if a challenging one. Helping to try and create the imagery for the new BASI (British Association of Snowsports Instructors) Alpine manual. We had the time and the budget to try and get every shot we needed in 4 days in January. Fine in theory…
A lot of planning went on reading through the new manual to see what images were required. By the time I arrived in Val d’Isere to meet up with Paul Garner and Giles Lewis from The Development Centre we were as ready as we could be. The first day was perfect, the sun shone, everyone was skiing well and we rattled of the best part of a 1000 shots (this included a lot of sequences).
Perfectionists
The real challenge came at the end of the day. I did a speedy edit to loose anything that was terrible and at the same time picked some of my favourites. I met up with Gi and Paul to have a look through our work of the day. Agreeing on good pictures was a very funny process, some of the ones I liked they said could never go in the manual because the skis weren’t parallel or their hand was in the wrong place. When I say their skis weren’t parallel most people wouldn’t notice it but these guys spend so much time examining the top level instructors the thought of being immortalised in the training bible in anything other than a perfect position was just not going to happen! On the other side some of the shots they liked I would be picky about if they weren’t pin sharp. I think from our first day of shooting we ended up with maybe 15-20 shots that we all were really happy with!
The weather
All we needed was 4 days of sunshine, all we got was one and a half! Typically mountain weather wasn’t sticking to our schedule. All was OK though as we made the most of the bad weather doing some off piste shots in the trees and shooting the central theme sequences.
All in all it was a busy few days, but great fun. Huge thanks to Paul Garner for getting me on board and also to Paul, Gi, Lena and Blair for skiing.
Here are a selection of shots from the shoot.
