The Breckenridge Ski Wedding

When people think about wedding photography, they don’t usually think about skiing action shots. That is what made this wedding so fun. I was able to pull from my background as an adventure travel photographer, and from my love of skiing, to create several images like this one.

Composition is the biggest challenge in action photography. That is especially true when there is more than one skier. For this shot I ended up skiing downhill from the couple and then used a long 200mm telephoto lens to photograph them coming towards me. Longer lenses allow me to to “stack” foreground and background elements making them appear closer to each other than they actually are. It also allows me to maintain relative size of objects at different distances. If I were to have been closer using a wider lens, the groom would have looked very small and distant. The longer lens allowed me to make them appear close to each other.

The other challenge in action photography is to convey a sense of speed and motion while still having a sharp image. To be able to do that requires a fair amount of knowledge about the sport in addition to the photography. Being able to predict how a person will be positioned during different parts of the turn, is what made the shot above possible.