Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

With a pending FIS announcement about a possible extension of ski races in Colorado scheduled for tomorrow, a blanket of at least 7 inches of fresh snow fell in Beaver Creek today. The snow caused the men’s downhill training run that was set to start at 11am to be cancelled. It is ironic that the races in Europe may be moved here next week because of not enough snow and that the race practice today was cancelled because of too much snow! As a photographer, you always hope for clear skies and bright sun to shoot in, but as a skier, you hope for a day like today, especially after the race was cancelled so early in the morning. There was only one thing left to do…

Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

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Francis Bompard/Agence Zoom

Photographing skiing, is one of the few sports that requires you to be on the “field of play” in order to do your job. To get the required shots that show the skiers in a dynamic fashion, you are often placing yourself in a position to be in what is called the “fall line.” This literally means the line the skier would take if the edges of their skis are no longer in contact with the snow, causing gravity to take over. Today, while shooting the women’s slalom race, German skier Maria Riesch lost her edge and slid into where a half dozen photographers were shooting from.

Natan Bilow/AP

Luckily, both John Mabanglo with EPA, who was the closest other photographer to the crash and the skier Riesch were unharmed. Slalom skiing is the slowest of the alpine disciplines, so luckily there was time to react to her fall and dodge out of the way. All in a days work!

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Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

The Women’s World Cup Skiing event made the annual stop in Aspen, Colorado, starting two weeks of skiing in Colorado, with the Giant Slalom and Slalom being run over the weekend and then a week of men’s skiing in Beaver Creek. Today was the first official day of training for the women, which consisted of a “free ski” with no gates on the race hill for 45 minutes.

Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Julia Mancuso is now the undisputed star of the US team, having won the Gold Medal at the Olympics in Italy this year. The pressure is on for her to keep up her winning ways, especially skiing back in her home country. All the top female skiers are here, so it will be a good opportunity for her to perform well.

Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Today was a relatively low pressure day for the skiers and the race officials. As a photographer, you could just about go where you wanted with out getting in anyone’s way, like a coach of a TV guy. So it is a good opportunity to go try to get some different pictures than what you would get on race day. Ski photography is very weather dependant, so hopefully Mother Nature will cooperate with us over the next couple of days…although they could really use some snow here!

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Photograph by Steve Pyke

One of America’s great, maverick, film director’s Robert Altman died yesterday. Like many of you I’m sure, I remember his sprawling, epic visions of America, and the thrilling and unexpected sense of awakening that came with seeing Nashville and The Long Goodbye for the first time, fllms that prised open your ideas of visual storytelling.

But what also flashes up in my mind when I think of Altman is his portrait shot by photographer Steve Pyke.

There’s no reason to think that because someone lives by their creative ‘eye’, that their face would embody that, or express that. But Altman’s eyes in Steve’s photo are hypnotic, everything is sucked in by those eyes, it’s almost painful keep his gaze.

I sent Steve a quick mail asking whether he had any memories of shooting Altman and he wrote back,

“Robert Altman has always rated one of my favourite directors if only for California Split. I was asked to photograph him in London for Premiere. He reminded me of Robert E Lee the southern civil war general. He seemed to me to have a lot of those older southern qualities, polite and gracious but also with him was a protective distance honed from years behind the camera.”

Rest in peace Robert Altman.

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 Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

The London Times ran this photo on Saturday of Ségolène Royal the new Blair-like Socialist candidate for the Presidency in France. Shot by AFP’s Eric Feferberg in colour, The Times ran it large in black and white.

It’s a brilliant, dramatic news shot, visualizing Ségolène Royal as the rising star shaking up French political life, and highlighting the media intensity of politics, as microphones, video cameras and stills cameras lay siege.

Welcome Ségolène Royal to the world of ‘the Candidate’.

Feferberg’s image is like a Russian doll of framing, the image is composed of frames within frames, drawing attention to how we in the media ‘frame’ everything up.

There’s the outside frame, Feferberg’s own crop, inside that there’s frame of the foliage and photographers (media foliage!), and inside that the frame of the arch of the windows, and finally the frame of the door where Royal emerges. Like Snow White.

The elections next year will decide whether Royal really is the fairest of them all.

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Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Typically post-event press conferences are just the coaches and top players talking about the game that took place minutes ago. Picture wise, these press-conferences can be pretty boring because it’s a guy sitting at a table with a microphone covering half of his body. However, every once in awhile you will get a memorable tirade such as those of Dennis Green or Jim Mora gave us in the past. Rarely though is it necessary for our photographers to shoot the press conferences. However, Saturday night (11/4/06) at the Mandalay Bay Events Center the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world broke down and cried for nearly 10 minutes.

I was editing for Ethan Miller, a staff photographer out of Las Vegas, just 10 yards or so from where the post-fight press conferences were taking place. Usually, photographers edit in a room in the back of the arena but for some reason when I got there I chose to sit with all the writers. We got lucky. As I started packing up for the night, Floyd Mayweather Jr. – the Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, or Roger Federer of his sport i.e. “the man” – walked on stage. Thinking he was just going to say how easy of a fight he had against Carlos Baldomir, I continued to pack up my gear. That is until I heard someone crying. I looked towards the stage and it’s Mayweather. I immediately grabbed Ethan and told him to get to work. Mayweather told the press “One more fight and I’m through. I don’t need boxing. I’m not in it for the money. It’s about legacy. I’m rich and I’ve accomplished what I want.” The he started to choke up and couldn’t talk for nearly 10 minutes. The press sat stunned not saying a word the entire time watching this larger than life figure at the top of his game – just 29 – say he is quitting on top.

Luckily for us, all the other photographers from the large news agencies were in the back finishing up their edits from the fight. That left Ethan as the only photographer capturing every moment of Mayweather spilling his heart out to the press. It made for some great photographs and a great lesson that I will continue to remember – watch the press conferences.

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Michael Buckner/Getty Images 

(Actress Charlize Theron improvising at the opening of Aeon Flux.)

Grazia magazine won Magazine Icon of the Year, at the Magazine Design Awards in London. Chatting with Jeremy Leslie, Group Creative Director at John Brown Citrus, he pointed out how innovative Grazia was in their use of photography, going large with celebrity images that would normally be run small, part of a series, on a single page. It was fascinating to see how that worked with one image of actor Charlize Theron shopping. The art director ran it over a double-page spread and turned what was a well shot but unremarkable image, into what looked like an observant piece of reportage, photojournalism. Without being cheap it really made the reader look as if they were getting an insight, a window, into the private world of Charlize Theron. The art director’s decision-making made me think about the extent to which great visual thinking is about improvisation. Art Direction as Eye Jazz.

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