Billabong 2010 Catalogue Shoot New Zealand

I've been in New Zealand shooting the 2010 Billabong winter catalogue for the past two weeks. The weather hasn't been very nice to us this year and I'm writing this while it is raining and super windy outside.
We've been staying in a great little house in the Cardrona valley complete with perfect mini ramp out front - unfortunately we've only been able to skate it twice, due to the rain!
The South Island of New Zealand is crawling with pro skiers and snowboarders at them moment. After dinner a couple of nights ago we went for a few drinks in town and inside the bar was literally a who's who of international snowboarding stardom - yes, even the "Flying Tomato" was there!
At our house is the Euro and Aussie Billabong teams and the house has also been a drop in for other traveling pro shreds. Staying at our house are photographers Eric Bergeri, Vanessa Andrieux and myself, along with pro shreds Anne-Flore Marxer, Wolle Nyvelt, Sylvain Bourboison, Robbie Walker, Clint Allan and Erin Tanner. Rookies - Michaela Davis-Meehan, Nick Wood and Jesse kennedy and the gel that holds everything together, team managers David Pitschi and Woody Sedgman. Yeah, it's pretty much a mad house!
The Billabong USA team is staying a bit closer to Wanaka.
Nightly tournaments of Fifa 09 on the Xbox 360 turn our house into a screaming den of French rage and cursing. These dudes take their football seriously - even if it is only a video game!
The riding is pretty serious too, and although I can't show much until the catalogue is done I can say it is a pleasure to work with so many professionals on a daily basis!
Here are a few B-roll shots from the trip so far. Look out for a full editorial feature in Issue 1 of Australian Snowboarder Magazine next year.
I'll do a more photo nerd specific update later.

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Some recent snow work

It's been a while between posts, mostly due to the amount of work I've been doing - shooting, driving, shooting, re-touching, more shooting, delivering finished images etc..Anyway, I can finally show some recent snow shots which were taken just a few weeks ago in Thredbo. The images have been published in the third issue of Australian and New Zealand Snowboarding as part of a story I wrote and shot about the Thredbo terrain park team and pro snowboarder Charles Beckinsale's incredible skills behind the controls of a snowcat/groomer. Charles is an amazing park builder and he built a great little unique feature up the top of Thredbo just out of sight of the main run. The idea was to get something a little different mid season and try to make the third issue of the current year's magazines as most images in the mags are shot the previous season.
The weather wasn't super kind to us and we only ended up having a small window of a day to shoot the feature that had taken just over two days to build. Thredbo resort has to be commended for supporting the vision of their terrain park managers Sammy Towers and Charles Beckinsale. There are a huge bunch of extremely talented skiers and snowboarders here in Australia and it's a shame they have to travel overseas to ride decent challenging parks and terrain. It's great to see these one off builds for film and photoshoots finally happening here in Australia, everyone benefits! More images below the cut.

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