This is the beginning of all hell breaking loose, but I missed all the gnar.
“I’m ready!” you tell your friend above, and a couple seconds later hear the distant response of “OK, dropping!” You fire off frames as your friend bursts from the lip of the jump, but he lets out an “Oh S#!T” as soon as he’s in the air, and you both know this is going to end badly. You have two choices. You can either lower your camera, and cringe as your buddy takes a massive digger, or you can hold down the shutter release and fire off frames like a machine gunner making his last stand. Either way, strange as it may seem, the first thing your friend will say when you get over to him is, “Tell me you got a picture of that.”
I’ve seen some pretty nasty stuff happen to friends while I was holding a camera, but I rarely got the defining photo because I didn’t want to be that jerk who stood there taking pictures while his friend got broken off. Among the first times this happened to me, I was shooting a friend who was trying to send a project at a climbing spot in American Fork. At the crux move, he reached for a high gaston with his left hand, but when he pulled on the hold, he dislocated his previously injured shoulder and went for a really nasty starfish whipper, got flipped upside down, and came into the wall head first. I got off about five frames while he fell but stopped shooting when I realized what was happening. Not that I could have done anything to stop it, but it seemed wrong to keep firing away like paparazzi while he smacked into the wall. Sure enough, I rappelled back to the ground and walked over to where he was sitting with a now relocated (but very painful) shoulder and blood coming out of his head. And all he said was, “Please tell me you got that.”
The last frame before I put my camera away. Fifteen seconds after this picture was taken, it was all over.
Last season I was backcountry skiing with another friend on a day that had fairly high avalanche danger. We spent hours figuring out safe lines, digging pits, and generally tiptoeing around on eggshells for the opportunity to safely ski one line. I had been shooting all day and put my camera away less than a hundred yards from the bottom of the run’s business while my friend started to traverse around the one section we determined too dangerous to ski. Sure enough, as soon as I zipped up my case, my partner triggered a slide that cracked five feet above him. The slide flipped him over head first before flushing him through a chute and over a 20-foot drop before spitting him out more than 100 feet down … and after the longest ten seconds of my life. I yelled down to see if he was OK. His answer, of course, was, “Yeah, I’m fine. I can’t BELIEVE that you didn’t get a picture of that!!!”
Climbing, skiing, mountain biking, and all the other stuff we do outside is dangerous. Bad things happen, and sometimes there’s just nothing we can do about it. But if you happen to have a camera in your hand when the bad stuff is going down, keep shooting! Don’t get me wrong. Safety is priority one. But you can’t do anything to stop your friend from casing a big jump, and in a big avalanche having a digital photo of your friend’s last-known location may actually help you find him. After the carnage is over, and you’re all at the bar rehashing the day’s events, your friend will be happy that you can hand over the camera and say, “Take a look at THAT shot.”
Without a GTS mentality, this dude never would have shot this entire video, and his friend would have never gotten to see just how nasty his tumble was (skip to 0:30) …
GTS: Get The Shot
By: Adam Riser | June 25th, 2010 | Posted in Commentary, Outdoor Articles | Tags: backcountry skiing, climbing, outdoor photography, photographyNo Comments »
This is the beginning of all hell breaking loose, but I missed all the gnar.
“I’m ready!” you tell your friend above, and a couple seconds later hear the distant response of “OK, dropping!” You fire off frames as your friend bursts from the lip of the jump, but he lets out an “Oh S#!T” as soon as he’s in the air, and you both know this is going to end badly. You have two choices. You can either lower your camera, and cringe as your buddy takes a massive digger, or you can hold down the shutter release and fire off frames like a machine gunner making his last stand. Either way, strange as it may seem, the first thing your friend will say when you get over to him is, “Tell me you got a picture of that.”
I’ve seen some pretty nasty stuff happen to friends while I was holding a camera, but I rarely got the defining photo because I didn’t want to be that jerk who stood there taking pictures while his friend got broken off. Among the first times this happened to me, I was shooting a friend who was trying to send a project at a climbing spot in American Fork. At the crux move, he reached for a high gaston with his left hand, but when he pulled on the hold, he dislocated his previously injured shoulder and went for a really nasty starfish whipper, got flipped upside down, and came into the wall head first. I got off about five frames while he fell but stopped shooting when I realized what was happening. Not that I could have done anything to stop it, but it seemed wrong to keep firing away like paparazzi while he smacked into the wall. Sure enough, I rappelled back to the ground and walked over to where he was sitting with a now relocated (but very painful) shoulder and blood coming out of his head. And all he said was, “Please tell me you got that.”
The last frame before I put my camera away. Fifteen seconds after this picture was taken, it was all over.
Last season I was backcountry skiing with another friend on a day that had fairly high avalanche danger. We spent hours figuring out safe lines, digging pits, and generally tiptoeing around on eggshells for the opportunity to safely ski one line. I had been shooting all day and put my camera away less than a hundred yards from the bottom of the run’s business while my friend started to traverse around the one section we determined too dangerous to ski. Sure enough, as soon as I zipped up my case, my partner triggered a slide that cracked five feet above him. The slide flipped him over head first before flushing him through a chute and over a 20-foot drop before spitting him out more than 100 feet down … and after the longest ten seconds of my life. I yelled down to see if he was OK. His answer, of course, was, “Yeah, I’m fine. I can’t BELIEVE that you didn’t get a picture of that!!!”
Climbing, skiing, mountain biking, and all the other stuff we do outside is dangerous. Bad things happen, and sometimes there’s just nothing we can do about it. But if you happen to have a camera in your hand when the bad stuff is going down, keep shooting! Don’t get me wrong. Safety is priority one. But you can’t do anything to stop your friend from casing a big jump, and in a big avalanche having a digital photo of your friend’s last-known location may actually help you find him. After the carnage is over, and you’re all at the bar rehashing the day’s events, your friend will be happy that you can hand over the camera and say, “Take a look at THAT shot.”
Without a GTS mentality, this dude never would have shot this entire video, and his friend would have never gotten to see just how nasty his tumble was (skip to 0:30) …
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Tags: backcountry skiing, climbing, outdoor photography, photography