Immersive Impressionism
Impressionism is a style of art that developed during the mid-to-late 19th century in Paris. At its core is painting to endow the essence of both light and subject, interpreted in the moment and on the spot. Raw and impermanent, colors tend to transition loosely as new layers of paint are added to still-wet layers upon the canvas. The result is a painting that looks a lot like what we feel when experiencing life. We see a sunset and feel its warmth; we see a storm approaching and feel its strength.We place our own emotion within our everyday view of the outside world, as well as our depictions of it.
The human eye sees the world at between 30 and 60 frames per second. When shooting a camera between 30 and 60 frames per second, a moving object will blur under most circumstances. Therefore, our eyes, all day, everyday, are taking in the world with a varied amount of motion blur. We naturally perceive our surroundings in a less-than-hyperrealistic way.
So why do people often shoot action photography with such a strong focus on freezing the subject? Obviously, a sharp image of a beautiful landscape with a slightly blurry rider transitioning the space is off-putting, but there must be ways in which we can convey the act of snowboarding with all its rapid decisions and movements that hits closer to its essence and feeling.
In marches the idea of shooting at a low shutter speed while riding along with the action, an immersive style that can make a simple powder turn in low-angle terrain feel exciting and engaging. While an image of a gigantic backside 720 on a backcountry jump in Whistler, BC, frozen at 1/2000th of a second will absolutely inspire the masses, I’d argue that a photograph of a side-hit ollie at Trollhaugen, WI, filled with strokes of light and color and the blur of the rider leaving the bounds of gravity can hit the soul just as hard. I’m not sure who first applied this way of image making to snowboarding, but I do remember being inspired by the way Silvano Zeiter made the pages of magazines feel alive. It felt as close to participating as I’d ever seen happen with photos. Those first images of his that I encountered stayed with me and never left.
Now I’ve been pursuing this endeavor season after season, sacrificing powder runs and blowing through endless rolls of film to blurrily immortalize a fleeting moment in time. On the other hand, sharing a friend’s white room while trying to compose a usable photograph is a lot more engaging than posting up solo on a distant peak to get the shot. I may not be focusing fully on my turns, but I’m still riding powder. Still challenging myself working with slow shutter speeds and hopefully inspiring other photographers to create images in ways that are new to them. At winter’s end only a few will stand out, but those few will tap into something so core to the feeling of gliding or flying or turning or simply riding this glorified sled down an incline. A photographic representation of the thing I fell in love with, while being fully immersed in doing the thing that I love. Far from technically perfect, but perfectly raw impressionism.
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*Bonus ending that got cut:
Kids will forever be pinning the pages of snowboard magazines to their bedroom walls in order to surround their little sanctuaries with the iconic. Included in those images will be the massive backside 720 but alongside it let’s add more. Let’s add the impressionist inspired photographs that blur the landscape in order to capture the feeling and not just the action. Let’s convey life on the page and let’s think up new “movements” within the world of snowboard photography to challenge our past notions of what we thought was great work. This environment has always been a progressive one so I think it’s fair game to nudge the evolution of this art form. Let’s not allow the way in which we capture the thing we hold most dear to stagnate. Get weird.
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