I posted a teaser photo a few weeks ago on Facebook asking for help captioning a photo related to this post. I only received one response, but it was a perfect description and I felt it would be a great title for this post as well. Thanks for your suggestion Olivia!
I am sad to say that I didn’t go snowboarding at all in 2013. I also am sad to admit that I haven’t been able to go this season yet either. I will say I am happy that I got an opportunity to go photograph my friends Nathan and Rick a couple weeks ago as they went out and shredded the urban snow blanket. I got a call to meet them by Observatory Hill in Madison, WI where they were building a jump over a sidewalk. They teamed up with another snowboarder and skier and by the time I got there everyone was putting the finishing touches on the jump. What happened over the next few hours included some solid snowboarding and some fun exploring!
After quickly observing the scene I realized I would need to play around in the snow myself if I wanted to have any fun with my camera. I ran back to my car, put on my full body snow suit, grabbed my boots and I was ready to rock! After a couple test runs everyone was ready to go. I had my camera set and I was literally lounging in snowbanks all afternoon trying to get the perfect angle for these photos. I did at one point lay on the sidewalk to get a few shots and in return I got a few interesting expressions from bystanders.
Everyone was having a good time and inevitably everyone got exhausted! The skier and snowboarder parted ways with us and Nathan and Rick were about done with the jump themselves, so I started packing up my gear. As I was packing up my gear, Nathan suggested that we go out to a wooded area and do some riding in there. I was about ready to go home, but I didn’t have anything better to do at this point so I followed along to document the next part of their adventure.
We eventually came across a very wooded area on campus and began navigating it on foot and on board in an effort to find some large fallen trees. The snow was deep which made it difficult to walk through, but that just added to the experience as we zigzagged through trees, fallen branches, and bushes. We found a long old tree that was down which Rick and Nathan were able to ride most of. Rick decided to go search for more cool riding opportunities and found a large fallen branch that was still attached to a tree. Nathan was beyond thrilled at the possibilities and began trying to ride up it. As you can see he gets up pretty high!
At the end of the day Rick and Nathan were satisfied with their boarding and I was excited to review the photos I took!
You can check out higher quality versions of these photos on my Flickr page!