Some of my favourite images from Niseko.com Magazine, Issue 28 (Dec/Jan 2015/16).
I wrote and shot the Heli Ski article, “Heli Heaven“, which was a great experience with Hokkaido Backcountry Tours. HBC recently won “Worlds Best Heli Ski Operator” at the 2016 World Ski Awards in Austria. Congrautlations HBC.
The “Hokkaido Dog” article was pretty fun to shoot. Turns out Hokkaido Dogs are kind of wild and not that tame. Mina (the dog) was a lot of fun to shoot with owner Jojo.
“Hokkaido Kitchen” is always fun. Soup Curry is one of the few Hokkaido specialty dishes, so it was nice to learn a bit more about the origins of the dish.
In the “Life In Motion” article, local brothers “Tenra” and “Kabuki” discuss skiing in Hokkaido. These kids are seriously crazy in the park, and I have no doubt that they’ll ski professionally (if they want to).
The “Everybody Loves Ramen” was difficult to shoot, because we had to eat the ramen after shooting it. I love ramen, but it’s really hard to eat 4 in one day!
“Living The Snow Life” with Emma Carroll was pretty straightforward, except for that Emma hates being in photos. She was happy with the photo, so that was a relief.
The “Niseko Rules” portrait of Akio Shinya was pretty difficult. He had submitted his own photo to the magazine, but as we’d seen it in other magazines previously, we didn’t want to print it unless necessary. When we asked if we could take a new portrait of him, he initially refused. I ended up going to his lodge with Jojo (Niseko.com advertising manager), who is also a local and well known in Niseko. We chatted with him for an hour or so about the article, life and other things before I asked if I could get a picture of him. He explained that he actually hates his photo being taken, and he always submits the same photo of himself to media outlets if they need it. I said that if he didn’t like the photo I took, we would run his regular image and he agreed. I took a couple of photos and thankfully he liked them and we published the one seen below.
“Gentem Stick” is one of the most legendary snowboard builders, and Taro Tamai is one of the most respected people in the business. I went with Kenichi Ishiyama who was interviewing him for the article. I got a few shots of him inside the showroom, but I felt that it didn’t really show Taro’s hard work and dedication to his company. So we went to his workshop and had him inspect some of the boards in there. I was really happy with the shots from his workshop and I think it goes nicely with the article.
