Freeskiing lives here

Last week the Subaru Freeskiing World Tour came through Revy again, and this time it teamed up with the Swatch Freeride World Tour. Located in some of the gnarliest terrain on Revelstoke Mountain Resort, the worlds best freeriders and freeskiers put on a show, skiing and snowboarding down the steepest lines, dropping off massive rock cliffs and dealing with every type of weather the mountain could throw at them. I was able to shoot most of the event, including the snowboarding on Mac Face in the Greely Bowl at RMR, and the skiing finals, on the backside of Mac Face, ‘Mac Daddy’, which is located out of bounds and on one hell of a steep face.

It took 3 weather days to finally get the go-ahead to ski the finals, with all the athletes being taken up in helis and most of the equipment taken up in RMR’s cat. Among the European and American athletes there were lots of local BC skiers and riders, including some athletes representing Revy that did well. So after lugging my camera gear all over the mountain, here are some of my favourites, including one that I’m proud to see ran in the Globe and Mail.

Revelstoke, BC - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - Nicolas Salencon of Argentina finds some open space at the FWT finals on Mac Daddy. Photo by Matthew Timmins

Revelstoke, BC - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - Sean Collin of Squaw Valley, USA at the FWT finals on Mac Daddy at Revelstoke Mountain Resort. (Matthew Timmins)

Revelstoke, BC - Friday, January 6, 2012 - Revelstoke's Scott Heale takes a nice drop on Mac Face in the Greely Bowl at the Freeride World Tour at Revelstoke Mountain Resort. (Matthew Timmins

Globe & Mail photo, January 12, 2012.

Check out shots of other riders, skiers and other fun pics of the event on my Facebook page at facebook.com/TimminsPHOTOS

World Jr. A Challenge – the Semi’s and Gold Medal

Langley, BC - Saturday, November 12, 2011 - Team USA's Sean Kuraly gets taken into the boards by Team Canada East's Jeff DiNallo during their semi-final game of the World Junior A Challenge at the Langley Events Centre. Canada East beat the USA 4-2. (Matthew Timmins)

Langley, BC - Sunday, November 13, 2011 - Powell River Kings' Sean Maguire makes a save for Team Canada West during the gold medal game against Team Canada East at the Langley Events Centre. Maguire was named the goaltender of the tournament's all-star team. (Matthew Timmins)

Langley, BC - Friday, November 11, 2011 Canada West's Alex Kerfoot puts the puck past Sweden's Oscar Dansk 2:09 minutes into overtime in their semi-final game at the Langley Events Centre, giving Canada West a 2-1 victory and sending them to the finals. (Matthew Timmins)

Langley, BC - Sunday, November 13, 2011 - Aaron Hadley of the Vernon Vipers and Team Canada West holds the World Junior A Challenge trophy at the Langley Events Centre after Canada West beat Canada East 4-2. Hadley scored once in the game. (Matthew Timmins)

Langley, BC - Sunday, November 13, 2011 - Team Canada West celebrates their 4-2 gold medal win over Team Canada East at the Langley Events Centre. (Matthew Timmins)

World Jr. A Challenge – The prelims

Still in Langley, I got to shoot the World Jr. A Challenge a couple weeks ago for some papers in BC and Alberta. I got kind of lucky that the tournament happened take place in town while I was there. The teams competing were Sweden, USA, Russia, Czech Republic and a Canada East and West team. The tournament had a lot of great talent, with many guys already drafted for the NHL or American colleges. Here are some shots from the preliminary round.

Langley, BC - Monday, November 7, 2011 - Czech Republic forward Erik Nemec takes out Canada East's Kevin Lough during their preliminary game of the World Junior A Challenge at the Langley Events Centre. Canada East won the game 5-0. (Matthew Timmins)

Langley, BC - Monday, November 7, 2011 - Swedish forward Gustav Possler gets rocked by USA's Sam Herr at the World Junior A Challenge at the Langley Events Centre. (Matthew Timmins)

Langley, BC - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - Team Czech Republic defenceman Jan Kostalek takes Team Russia forward Valentin Zykov into the boards during the World Junior A Challenge at the Langley Events Centre. The Czechs beat the Russians 4-3. (Matthew Timmins)

Langley, BC, - Monday, November 7, 2011 - Team Sweden goaltender Oscar Dansk makes a save on Team USA's Austin Cangelosi as Sweden's Ludwig Nilsson trails the play at the World Junior A Challenge at the Langley Events Centre. Dansk had 44 saves to help Sweden to a 1-0 overtime win. (Matthew Timmins)

White Rock Kiteboarding

I’ve been working in Langley, BC, lately, and will be here until things start up again for winter in Revy. It’s taken some adjusting to get used to the suburban lifestyle, surrounded by stripmalls, shopping malls and neighbourhoods that all look similar. But yesterday I took a short drive down to the water to White Rock on my day off. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. When I got there, it was really windy all along the beach, and there were kite boarders riding in the Semiahmoo Bay. I’ve shot a bit of kite boarding in Grand Bend, but not a lot. So I got out my camera and started shooting this one rider in particular, who was getting some huge air. I waited for him to come in, but he was out there for hours, and I had been shooting for over an hour in the pouring rain. Not only were my clothes soak, but my camera was starting to get wet. Satisfied with what I had, I went to dry off in my car.

The difficult thing about shooting kiteboarding is that 1, the riders are often far away, 2, you need to decide if you want a tight shot of the rider, with no kite, or a loose shot of the rider and the kite, and 3, to position yourself in the right way that when they get air, you can see how high they really are, and to be somewhere with something in the background to give perspective. I shot these from the beach, with a 300mm lens.

White Rock, BC - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - Kite boarders get some air in Semiahmoo Bay in White Rock, near the US border. (Matthew Timmins)

Tofino – Part 1

I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to Vancouver Island for the first time and check out Tofino, Canada’s surf capital, and a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Tucked at the very north end of Pacific Rim National Park, surrounded by giant cedars, mountains, bears, cougars and sometimes snow, you can find Canada’s most popular surf spot. A very unique place, I spent two days on the beaches, hiking trails and water taking photos, and thinking how great it would be to get the Grand Bend surf crew over here for a surf trip.

Pacific Rim National Park, BC - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - A surfer catches a wave on Long Beach early in the evening on Long Beach. (Matthew Timmins)

Pacific Rim National Park, BC - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - A local surfer rides a wave at Long Beach. (Matthew Timmins)

Pacific Rim National Park, BC - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - A local surfer has some fun on Long Beach. (Matthew Timmins)

Tofino, BC - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - A bald eagle sits on a small island of rock in Clayoquote Sound, near Tofino. (Matthew Timmins)

Jack Layton, 1950-2011

This week Canada lost one of it’s great leaders, the head of the NDP and the official opposition Jack Layton.

The only significant time I spent in Ottawa was back in 2007 during my internship at the Ottawa Citizen and the only assignment I had where Jack Layton was present was at an event at Parliament Hill. As a student I was pretty excited to get a photo of Mr. Layton, but also was impressed with how down-to-earth he was talking to the kids and the people congregated on the steps of the Hill. As he walked past a row of kids and high-fived them, myself and other media took photos, and he asked me if I’d gotten what I needed (photo-wise). To make sure I got a good photo of him with the kids, he returned and high-fived several kids a second time. While I’m sure he just wanted to look good for the paper (I don’t think the photos ran the next day), I was just happy to get a photo of him.

Layton lost his battle with cancer on Monday, and Canadians and both party members and political foes have voiced their condolences, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper offering a state funeral, to be held on Saturday.

Ottawa, Ontario - May 29, 2007 - Jack Layton at the World Harmony Run, a global torch relay that went across the country, from Victoria, BC to St. John's, Newfoundland, and through 80 other countries. (Matthew Timmins, The Ottawa Citizen)

Ottawa, Ontario - May 29, 2007 - Jack Layton at the World Harmony Run. (Matthew Timmins, The Ottawa Citizen)

New website launched!!

Finally after countless hours searching for original files, I have gathered up (most of) the photos that I’ve been wanting to put on my website, www.matthewtimminsphoto.com, which launched last week. If you have followed my photos over the years, most of them won’t be new to you, and many have appeared on this blog after they were shot. But it was time to have all my portfolios available in one place.

Things are still being tweaked on the site, but overall I’m very happy with it, so feel free to check it out. The content on the site won’t change frequently, and day-to-day, week-t0-week stuff will appear on here  or at www.facebook.com/TimminsPHOTOS.

Thanks for checking in!

Yoho

Last week I did some camping in Yoho National Park, Canada’s second oldest national park. There is so much history in that park, with the railway running through it, winding up and down, through the mountains, it’s hard to imagine planning and building a rail system like that, let alone doing it over a hundred years ago. Also, no longer being in the Selkirk and Monashee mountains, and back in the Rocky Mountains, where I lived in Canmore and Jasper, it’s amazing to see how different the mountains are. Sure, both Alberta and BC have huge mountains, but once you have spent time in both, you start to notice the differences, and while every mountain pass is huge and it takes hours to drive through them all, they are at the same time so closely connected. It’s a pretty cool feeling when get right in the middle of a valley and away from all the people and are surrounded by mountains, or to the top of a mountain and are surrounded by glaciers. So huge, but so close you feel you could reach out and touch them.

Yoho National Park, BC - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - My campsite, with Takakkaw Falls slightly visible in the background. (Matthew Timmins)

View the rest of the photos @ www.facebook.com/timminsPHOTOS

It’s a big, fun country to live in

Thanks to some friends getting married this month, I had a good excuse to come back to Ontario for a short visit. During some pre-wedding time with some of the wedding party and some of the Endless Surf crew I got the chance to spend some time in the Kawarthas. Now, I have been living in the mountains for a few years now, and Ontario gets a bad rep out there as a boring, ugly and non-adventurous province. So, here are a few photos to defend that. As always, it’s nice to be home.

Anstruther Lake, Ontario - Thursday, June 30, 2011 - Andy Oke does some acrobatics on the wakeboard during a calm evening in the Kawarthas, near Peterborough. (Matthew Timmins)

 

Also, as mentioned in the previous post, I came back to Vancouver and got some shots of the city during Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Unfortunately for Vancouver, the Canucks lost to Boston, and riots broke out in the crowd of thousands of fans that went downtown to watch the game on giant screens in the streets. I had just left to head to some friends, minutes before the riots broke out, but some photos of the scene, before and after, can be seen here on my Sportsshooter site – www.sportsshooter.com/mtimmins.

Vancouver!

I was in Vancouver for most of this month working at a non photo-related job. I have been there once before (for the NPAC conference in 2008), but haven’t spent any other time there. It was exciting to be there this month, as the Vancouver Canucks battled their way to the Stanley Cup finals. I was working most days, so the days I had off I spent being a tourist. I stayed in a hotel near Stanley Park, so I got to do a bit of touring around there. Here are a few shots taken during my time off. Maybe you’ll see some hockey fan shots if I decide to head up there for the Cup-winning game!

Richmond, BC - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - Flames soar into the night sky after a condo project caught fire in the Vancouver suburb around 10:30pm. The building was only weeks from completion when it caught fire, sending embers high into the sky and flames high enough for Vancouver residents to see 30 kilometres away. No one was in the building. (Matthew Timmins)

Vancouver, BC - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - A view of the Lions Gate Bridge on a foggy Vancouver morning. (Matthew Timmins)

North Vancouver, BC - Thursday, May 19, 2011 - Lynn Canyon. (Matthew Timmins)

Vancouver, BC - Thursday, May 19, 2011 - Ships sit at dusk in English Bay. (Matthew Timmins)

Vancouver, BC - Sunday, May 22, 2011 - The view down Davie St. from the hotel, with English Bay and parts of North Vancouver in the background. (Matthew Timmins)