Reuben KrabbeCheck out Reuben Krabbe's winning images here. Launch Gallery »Banff, Alberta, recently hosted its first-ever Banff Photographer Shootout, which was organized by a group of snowboarders and structured similarly to Whistler's well-known Deep Winter Photo Challenge. Six photographers spent seven days in mid January capturing images, which were then boiled down to a three-to-five minute slideshow. The winner? Ski photographer Reuben Krabbe.
In this type of competition, planning and working efficiently within the timeframe is a must. So a day before the contest started, Krabbe had everything in order: skiers, locations, an itinerary of where he wanted to go when. But things didn't exactly go as planned. "During the competition everywhere east of and including Banff was dealing with temperatures below -20 [Celsius]," Krabbe says. "However at the same time Revelstoke was dealing with rain up to treeline and the worst avalanche conditions the area had seen in 30 years. The main highways were closed because of this, and even the next best alternate route closed down turning three hour drives into seven."
For his slideshow, Krabbe says he wanted to explore how much bigger our sport is than the typical skiers you see in magazines and videos throwing down big tricks. So he worked with skiers of all ages, starting with an 8-year-old named Steve who was learning to carve corduroy, then moving into urban, park, powder and big-mountain skiing all the way to an 84-year-old skier named Eddie.
"Although we all love to watch skiers throw themselves off unnaturally big features, or snorkel through overhead powder," he says, "our sport isn't only defined by those days. Skiing to me is bigger, it includes more, it's everyone who can identify with a two planked downhill pursuit in winter."
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