M fiance T was playing the Pemberton Festival this weekend, so we packed up the car, picked up the camping gear in Whistler and made our way up to a dusty field in the shadow of Mount Currie. It normally takes about 35 minutes to drive from Whistler to Pemberton but we started hearing horror stories of 4 and 5 hour waits so we got in the right headspace, put on some mellow music from DJ K-tel, and hit the road. 10 minutes out of Whistler we were at a standstill. the traffic stopped and started for the next hour and a half but two hours after we left Whistler, we pounded the last tent peg into our campground and set out to explore the festivities.

read the rest of the blog and see all the photos at danopendygrasse.com

More shots from the hood.

Not to much to say about these. Folks have told me they like the photo updates so they will keep coming. I like the fact that I am shooting things that have no home and no expectation of sales. My entire career I've been making pictures with the exclusive purpose of sales, but with my group of "walking around town" shots, I never think, never try to make something commercial, just click away at things that look cool to me for whatever reason, and that's all I need...


Read the whole posting and see the photos at danopendygrasse.com

As the summer finally hits in all its glory, I am swamped with work. I am convinced though, that I live in the best place in the world. My fascination with Vancouver's old buildings continues, while new ones pop up all over the place.

Here are some shots of the world around me. More coming soon.

See the photos at danopendygrasse.com

I've held off for a week talking about the demise of Future Snowboarding Magazine but it's sunday and I have a minute, and I've had some time to digest the news. I've spoken to most of the people there and although it was a huge shock, they are all moving forward - life goes on. That office was a really amazing place, it was full of some of the most interesting people I've met through snowboarding and it feels like beyond losing something we built, people are most disappointed that the "band" is getting broken up and won't get to play together anymore.

When FSM started, it was going to be the centerpiece of a group of action sports magazines, and Future US, the parent company, set up infrastructure to support that.

The rest of this blog, with photos, is available at danopendygrasse.com

I just wrapped up a week-long photo workshop with Greg Heisler. Vancouver Photo Workshops put it on, and even though I've been shooting for over 15 years, it was my first ever workshop. 6 weeks ago I had no idea that Vancouver even HAD photo workshops let alone with photographers of the stature of Mr. Heisler. If you aren't from the photo world and don't know his resume, suffice it to say that he is a very heavy cat, and is probably amassed one of the most impressive bodies of work in all of portraiture, and certainly of the last 3 decades. He currently has 74 covers of Time Magazine as well as countless other photos in just about any magazine you can think of. So there.

Read the rest and see the photos here

Once every year, in the Spring, I find a quiet place and do my edit. I look at every photo that I have shot over the course of the winter and determine which ones will go to the magazines and which ones will be banished to the archive hard drive.


Read the rest and see the photos at:

ww.danopendygrasse.com

Sometimes I get in so deep with all the things that need to be done, that I stop taking pleasure in anything. I'm literally checking things off a "to do" list from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep. That's when I usually end up exhausted, on a couch, feeling like death warmed over and wondering what the hell is going on.

The other day we shot a really long day, and despite the crazy weather, I managed to get some really good action, as well as some other interesting stuff. (more on that in a second)

...Read the whole blog at www.danopendygrasse.com

This post originally appeared with photo in the blog section of danopendygrasse.com

Anyone who has followed my career at all knows all about my slideshow curse. In short, I've never done a slideshow that I didn't fuck up.

It all started with the Pro Photographer Showdown way back in 1800 or something. We were still using slide projectors, so that gives you an idea. I had literally never done a slideshow before and I spent days and days going through my stock to come up with 80 shots. It had to be 80, because that is two trays of slides. The slides alternate from one projector to the other. It all seems very logical, however, I was nervous and I set the order of slides to go from one tray and then the next. The result was the second half of my slideshow was intermingled with the first. It was chaos and it looked like shit. Did I mention that there were 500 people there including my family? Uh huh.

Fast forward to last year and the first ever Deep Winter contest. I did a ton of research and test slideshows and was pretty confident that I had the curse licked. At 4 PM I marched into MY place, where the show was taking place, to do my dry run. As soon as I saw the first shot I knew I was screwed. The resolution was way too low and the photos were totally pixelated. I tried to re-export the show at a higher resolution with no luck at all. At about 5 PM we decided we had to rebuild the whole show from scratch, in a program I had never used. The show was at 8.

Even though we managed to throw something together, when we tried to play it there were some technical problems and the sound would cut out after the first slide. The audience was very patient...

Anyway, I'm doing the Deep Winter contest again in a week and I have been stressing about everything. I have done dry runs a dozen times, made slideshows from scratch in an hour, run into a ton of little problems and fixed them so now I am ready. Right? We'll see. The thing about having a curse is that you can never predict how it will screw you...

Here is a shot from sledding on boxing day. My brother-in-law Paul took it with my camera. I like sledding.

Dano

One of the cool things about being a photographer is that you never know what kind of work you're going to end up doing. When the phone rings, I tend to say "yes" first, and then figure out what it is that I said "yes" to…

Recently some dudes I know launched a new venture called Whistler Creek Productions and asked me to be a part of it. It is a collective, which is to say, they run it, but everyone has input. We had a "coming out" party in Whistler during the Whistler Film Festival and it was hugely successful, I set up a "photo booth" where people could press a button and take their own photo. It was cold outside but people got into it and the photos were Hilarious.

So anyway, I get a call to do a plate shot for a commercial. Of course I say yes. The director is Randy Krallman who has done some really cool stuff including the amazing "Still free" piece for Mark Ecko. Interestingly enough, he's really down with the shred dog scene, spent time in SLC and we have mutual friends. He knows my work from snowboarding, I know his culture stuff. Cool bro. Etc.

So ya, the job. We drive around Vancouver on a stunningly beautiful day to shoot a little piece of forest for a background in a beer commercial. For real. That's the job. It's actually surprisingly difficult to find the exactly right looking piece of forest, but still, I mean, drive out into the middle of nowhere on a 13 thousand dollar snowmobile, in the freezing cold, banging your shit around, hoping that some snowboarder will land something, or drive around in a nice SUV with really friendly cats talking about how nice of a day it is…

-dano.

So…

Where ya been? I haven't seen you in awhile. Been busy? Happy? Good. Nice to hear. Me? Oh man, so much going on.

I'm moving. Oh you heard. Ya I'm moving back to Canada. No, probably not Whistler. Vancouver. Ya, I have lots of friends there and I haven't lived there since I was a teenager, so I'm pretty excited about it. I'm loving the city these days. Vancouver is amazing.

I'm getting married too. To T. I know, it's still really new. Well thanks, I'm stoked too. She proposed just before we drove down to California. No, she's not here now, in Honduras. I dropped them at LAX and she took Pammy down and taught her to dive. They're having an awesome time. They saw a frickin sawfish. How is that? I know! I would be too. She'll be back here at the end of the month. She's going to help me pack up my stuff.

The mag? Oh it's doing well, that's why I feel ok about heading home. I'm showing Crispin Cannon the ropes right now. He has a month to learn how all this works, and then he's on his own! Ya, I'll still shoot for FSM, I just want more outside time and less office time. Thanks. That's nice of you to say. Well ya, we worked really hard on it. Colin is good. Finished his book. He's shopping it around right now.

Cool, cool. Ok right on. We'll talk to you soon then. Good to see you…