I am between gigs and won’t have time to write a detailed report from this shoot but wanted to share some Horseshoe Open photos with everyone.

It was a great weekend up at Horseshoe Resort for their big annual ski & snowboard festival, the Horseshoe Open.  The weather was amazing and spring skiing was all-time.  Olympic Gold medalist and past Horseshoe Open winner, Dara Howell, was on site signing autographs.

Photo-wise, the light was decent and temperatures quite comfortable.  I was a tad cold for the Big Air comp on Saturday night but that was mostly due to my getting hot setting up my gear then standing relatively still for 2hrs.  Rail Jam and Slopesyle events were under beautiful sunny conditions. All backlit of course, but sunny.

For this shoot, I picked up a 500mm f4 from the fine folks at Nikon Canada.  I am in the market for a super telephoto and am trying to get some time in with each the 400, 500 and 600mm.  I have shot fairly extensively with the 400mm f/2,8 but have never tried  the 500 or 600mm.  My recent surf shoot has me waiting some more reach.  I was originally leaning towards the 400 or 600 but after trying the 500mm, that may change.  It was much nicer to handhold and played well with my TC-14e teleconverter, which I used extensively this weekend and got me to a tight 700mm.   The model I tried was an older D model so I can only expect better results with a new VRII, which has the yummy Nano Crystal coating.  The lens allowed me some amazing vantage points, including getting way up on the deck of the Crazy Horse bar above the action.

For the night shots, event organizer Jonathan Reid was kind enough to give me a lift up on his sled so that I could use two of my Elinchrom Ranger packs.  I have only ever used my Speedlight for this sort of shoot but had good results with the Rangers.  I did use three SB-800 Speedlights as a rim for the athletes and to light the lip of the jumps.

Off to pack up for another shoot but hope you enjoy these photos from the 2014 Horseshoe Open.

Provided that it’s for personal use, you can feel free to repost these images to your Facebook and Instagram pages. All I request is that you please do not crop or alter them in any way.  #nofilter

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