When Powder Magazine’s photo editor Dave Reddick called to tell me that this photo of Jeff Campbell was gracing the cover of their December issue as a double page spread I was pretty much as giddy as a kid.  Never would I have imagined that this would happen, let alone this early on in my pursuit of photography.  It was only a few years ago that I decided to give a valiant go at this and pictures of past covers from Powder issues were hanging on my wall for inspiration and motivation.  Bridget and I were driving north through San Clemente yesterday and we stopped by the Powder headquarters to chat and say hi to the folks there, it just so happened that the truck delivered the issue that very day hot off the press.  Definitely a huge honor and a moment to cherish as it could be a while before this happens again.

Sidenote:  Big thanks goes out to Jeff Campbell, without him this might not have happened.   I had the concept in my head at the start of the season to mount my camera above a skiers head and trigger a remote flash to really give the viewer a perspective of what a face shot might be like.  Jeff is one of the kindest, hardest working and dedicated skiers that I know…not to mention he is brilliant (getting his PhD in Engineering at UW).  So when we collaborated on this idea while skiing at the Sorcerer Lodge this past January it was his ideas that helped me rig up the camera on a pack.

I have had a few emails regarding how I got this shot, so for those interested I mounted the Nikon D3s to Jeff’s backpack with three ski straps a tripod and on the left side of him I had an Alien Bee 800.  It was all linked together via a set of Radiopoppers and  I triggered my camera via a remote trigger while standing by the flash.  We tried it twice and this was the second attempt.