Shooting a snowboard campaign in early November is always a gamble, especially in Oregon, where snow conditions can be hit or miss. But sometimes, luck is on your side. For VUARNET's latest eyewear campaign, I teamed up with Forrest Shearer to capture a mix of performance and style in the mountains, without knowing exactly what the conditions would throw at us.
Leading up to the shoot, it was a waiting game. Would there be enough snow? Would we get decent light? Oregon delivered just enough of both. The mountains had an early-season dusting, and a cold snap kept things looking wintery. It wasn’t deep by any stretch, but it was enough to make it work.
Forrest is the kind of rider who makes any conditions look good. He knows how to read the terrain and adapt to whatever’s in front of him, which made my job a lot easier. We focused on capturing natural movement, nothing forced, nothing overly staged. The goal was to showcase Vuarnet’s eyewear in real mountain conditions, and sometimes that means rolling with what nature gives you.
The biggest challenge was the light. In early winter, the sun stays low, throwing long shadows and shifting fast. Timing was everything. A couple of times, we had to reset shots just to wait for a break in the clouds. But when the light hit right, it paid off.
This shoot wasn’t about chasing the deepest powder or the biggest lines, it was about capturing the way gear performs in real conditions. And that’s what made it work.
Below are some screen grabs of images that we captured.
