VD'S PHOTODAWG BLOG



Hi Folks
Let me introduce myself.
Vernon Deck
Kiwi/import Swiss
Photographer
Cynic.

Any comments?? Send me MAIL HERE!

30/03/2009

Had big hopes for today, but it turned out to be a chance wasted. Too much messing around in the morning meant we missed the small window of good weather that had been forecasted. Although we waited up on the mountain for 5 hours the sun didn't show up again. We went out for dinner in St Anton in the evening. If you want average food and stupidly high prices go to Kandahar restaurant. Service was good though, she was hot! We also went for a beer after at the famous sausage fest bar, Funky Chicken. It turned out to be a more than average sausage fest that also had a bad ski movie playing so we departed.


Schnipfel, Pirates Filmer


Blair Habenicht, NW shred


Eric Haugo, Nice guy metal head


Tracy from Zimbabwee


Markus Keller easygoing serious Swiss shred


Filippo Kratter, lock up your daughters/wives,grandmothers

How things can change. We all slept a bit longer than normal, everyone seemed a bit bummed still from yesterday. So we left the house at 10.30, not expecting a very productive day. It turned out to be one of the best days of the season! We found good snow and the boys turned it on. Some serious snowboarding was witnessed by some very stoked tourists and I shot the biggest cliff-drop I've ever seen. Absolutely amazing for me to see that happen through my viewfinder.


Hike to the first drop of the day.


Skiers believe in the "safety in numbers" theory.


Yes or No????


Lift closed for the day and the light getting sweet.


Markus gives the thumbs up after his drop.

Today was one of those days that should have been amazing but it just didn't happen, for one reason or another. Easy to get frustrated but that just makes matter worse. Just have to make it work tomorrow I guess.


Keller hiking into misty woods


TM Prokes, kicking it just off the piste


Schnipfel discussing the last run with Markus, down in the gully


Eric Haugo, straight line, ready to drop

Arlberg has had the best winter in many years and I have been lucky enough to be here pretty much the whole time. Not that I've ben riding much myself. Shooting in conditions like today is very difficult and time consuming, it also wrecks the cameras pretty darn quick. But at the same time it is amazing. Not sure if my children(if I ever have any!) will be able to shred powder like this.


Another powder turn from Blacky


No words


A shark attacked Keller without any warning.


Everything we hit today was sliding after us. Fun times

Went back to the same zone as yesterday. Similar weather today with sunny patches everywhere but where we were standing. But we waited it out and eventually got what we needed. I ended up with a couple of real sweet pictures, ones that really make me feel good. I anticipated the bad light and dragged my big flash kit up there. It was a hassle and very heavy to be hiking around with but it paid off in the end.


Blair and Markus, waiting for the sun. You can see the patches on the other side of the valley but they never made it over to us.


Tourist stairway to heaven


Blair Habenicht popping the Avi barrier


L to R. Markus Keller, Steve Gruber, Scott Sullivan, Blair Habenicht

22/03/2009

The Wangl Tangl is over and everyone has left town. A small crew of us decided to stay for a few days as the snow here is still ok. This morning after checking out of our apartment and loading up the cars we met at the lift and started scoping around. The crew was Arthur Longo, Markus Keller, Blair Habenicht, with Scott Sulivan and myself shooting. It was pretty gray and colld out but we found this zone with good snow and lots of hidden features. Its always a little frustrating on days like these. You find stuff that would make a great picture but because of the bad light it doesn't work. SO you sit and wait for a patch of sun but after a while the rider gets cold. So you shoot it anyway and just after the sun comes out.


Longo testing the Avi barrier.


Blair double checking it.


These old wooden barriers were sort of sketchy to hike under.


Scott Sulivan

No finals today either. Visibility was bad enough that event organizers made the call to cancel the finals and resorted to running a fun session on in the rail park. The standings from the semi's 2 days before would be counted as the final ranking. That meant that team "Swiss & Cheese" won the 2009 Wnagl Tangl. The team captained by Markus Keller also had Ipod, Lukas Blasser and UK last pick, Jack Shacklton. That night there was an art show. A bunch of different artists had got busy on Wolle Nyvelts old Asmo boards. Scott Sulivan played a long set and everyone was having a good time. The vibe at this event is different than other events, mellow and easy going.


Volcom's Chris Pfanner doubling over his team mate.


Andy Scott doing the same to his team mate.


Volcom Photographer and talented musician, Scott Sulivan.


Asmo art.


Scott Sulivan, Milla with papi Wolle.

Whiteout on the mountain today so the finals got postponed. Everyone hung around for a while, chatting and causing mischief. I gave my camera to Arthur Longo for a while and he was soon claiming how easy it is to be a photographer. Good luck!


Tonton and Arthur, opposing similarities.


Longo pic #1. Claw


Longo pic #2. Henry Jackoffson.


Longo pic #3. Yours truly.


Keller helping Ipod out with a crusty booger.

Beautiful warm spring conditions today and the riders loved it. The comp is a team event with each team having 4 riders. It was semi-final time today. It was sort of madness as there was always 4 guys on the course at once and that made it hard for me to shoot all the action. Fun day though.


Ipod backflip #1


Markus Keller backflip #2


Did you hear the one about the Swiss guy, the Russian guy and the UK guy?


Riders waiting for the GO!


Gary Greenshields is from Northern UK

Driving to the gondola I was looking forward to a sunny day shooting in a slushy park. Exiting the gondola at the top I saw that there was a cloud over the park. It stayed there all day! So there wasn't much going down, the visibility wasn't really good enough for the riders to hit the kicker line and anyway the light for shooting was horrible.


Tyler Chorlton, handplant #1


Danny Larsen Handplant #2


Beckna Eberharter Handplant #3


Tonton Holland Handplant #4

I'm in Lovely Mayrhofen for the rest of this week. Its the legendary Wangl Tangl event, put on by the Ästhetiker crew. They always make an amazing park up at Penken and together with the skate ramp and parties it's a full-on week. Or so I've been told as I've never actually made it in the past years.

So I'm gonna find out if the stories are true. Today was mellow, just open training for everyone. It was warm and sunny most of the time and I spent some time catching up with old friends. I did a few shots but just as I started shooting, Arthur Longo went down with a tweaked back muscle and Tonton Holland dislocated his thumb.


Stef Zeestratten, half Kiwi half Dutchy, 100% tweaker.


Schnitzel und pommes bitte


Halfpipe shaper from the birds angle.


A farmer left his oven on. Big BBQ.


Tyler Chorlton, also 100% tweaker. Must be the jacket eh?

Iouri Podladtchikov Aka "Ipod" joined me at the team house last night. He arrived a day late but he had a good excuse. He had been in Davos the day before and it had snowed there. Because of this he could leave as his new 911 Porsche didn't have winter tires.

We went out in the morning and got a really nice shot. Simple, easy and close to the house, perfect. Spring has hit big time here, everything is in meltdown mode so we were happy not to go up the mountain and witness all the beautiful features that have built up over winter going rotten.

After getting the shot we dicided to take the roof of the 911 and go for a cruise up to Lech for a beer. Ipod is super proud of his new whip which is fair enough as it is pretty cool. He let me drive it back from Lech, not sure how he feels about that decision now but I had a blast and I think he shit his pants. Way more fun driving over the Arlberg pass in that sort of car! Arlberg drift.


A happy Ipod on shuffle.


Springtime, roof off please.


Ipod thinks his 911 is nicer than the proto type station wagon Porsche that we spotted.

Sunnyhead Mtn today. A lot of new snow since I was there last. The avalanche danger sort of limited where we could go so we stuck to the tree's. One of the crew, Elias stomped one of the biggest cliff-drops I'v ever seen. Filippo had a scary moment while he was hiking to check out a drop. The whole top of the cliff band cracked under his feet and slid over the cliffs. Would have been a nasty ride! In the afternoon we built a kicker, ready for tomorrow.


Elias standing on top of the monster cliff


Filippo's close escape. Clean fracture line.


Elias with a fun little pillow jib. 1/2cab to bs180 off.


Hiking was hard work today. balls deep.

Well today was our last chance to produce some pictures in Livigno and we did! It wasn't easy and it didn't go as some of the guys had in mind, but it worked out how I had imagined it. For a change, no-one came and bothered us, just one guy asked us to clean up when we had finished "playing". After a nice day of shooting in the sun, good banter within the crew and shots in the bag we all headed of on our separate ways. I'm in Zurich now and heading back to Arlberg tonight to hook up with a different Pirates crew for the rest of the week.


This is how we roll, no expense spared.


Markus Keller, 1st hit of the day. More to come!


The owner of the restaurant we went to a few nights in a row. Cool bloke. Spoke Swiss German too!


Markus and Mu are good friends.

Frustrating day or what! First we got woken up at 8.30 by the landlady saying we had to be out of the apartment in 15min. So we packed and headed to a restaurant for breakfast, the she walked in there super pissed and started freaking out about how dirty the place was etc. Dimi had unscrewed a door and put it under his soft mattress and she wasn't stoked about that either. Any, she demanded 200euro for special cleaning. We cut a deal, Dimi screwed the door back on and we gave her 100euro and left. Next we had this urban hip thing shaped up and were just getting some shots when this dude started freaking out at us and came with a frontend loader and completely dug up our tranny and took it away. He even tried to run over Dimi(after Dimi spat on him admittedly). So we had yet another day of being pretty unproductive. The whole trip now sorta rests on tomorrow. We have a potentially amazing feature to hit, we just need some luck. Fingers crossed and I'll let you know how it goes.


Markus speed testing the doomed tranny.


Justin L'Heureux and Dimi workin it


Crazy dude about to eat our hard work


Markus and Schniphel, worn out.

Nothing much happening today. We drove around to some different spots and actually found a couple of really cool features but just not possible with the conditions how they are now. One spot I am really excited about, we will be trying to make it work if the sun comes out tomorrow of the next day. Another place was looking good and we had started to get ready to shoot when the owner came by and kicked us out. In the evening we went and supported Filippo who was doing a big-air competition in town. It was pretty cold so we stayed inside the riders lounge and watched it on the bigscreen. Unproductive times at the moment but for sure a lot of laughs every day.


This dog was locked up and very lonely. He was very sad to see us leave, I felt sorry for him.


Dimi and Markus, very colorful


Filippo getting a good luck kiss


We turned up to this restaurant at 23.30 and this guys very kindly made us some pizzas.


Filippo and his beautiful girlfriend.

Everyone was hungover this morning. The shots at dinner turned into shots in a bar then on to shots in a nightclub. Filippo took the honors for most messed up. I was up at 8.30 because there were no curtains in my bedroom(kitchen). Anyway we had a mellow breakfast then drove around in the fog looking for things to do. The motivation levels weren't peaking but we tried something and ended up getting a couple of shots that I'm pretty stoked on. Sorry I can't show them here though. It seems strange to tell about good pictures that we keep getting but not showing anything, but I have to keep these shots exclusive for Volcom and magazines. Keep an eye out though, they will be printed in the near future somewhere.


The view out when I woke up this morning


Stefan "Mu" Maurer aka clown suit guy throws snowballs as part of his act.


Schnipfel, Pirate filmer

An early alarm got me out of bed and 20 min later I was in my car pounding out the kilometers. I'd arranged the night before to meet a Pirate Films crew in Livigno, Italy at 10am. To cut a long story short they didn't arrive. I was bummed at them to begin with. I got the call when I was dropping down into St Moritz so I decided to spend some time looking around. It's a strange place filled with people who sort of don't belong in the mountains. If you're not wearing fur on at least 50% of your body you won't fit in up there. The surrounding landscape is very beautiful though.

I eventually met up with the crew at 18.00 and we moved into our home for the next few days. Filippo Kratter is sort of a local here so we followed him to a restaurant. It was an awesome dinner with lots of laughs and good food. After we'd finished eating the owner came by our table with 5 bottles of liquor, grappa, sambucca and some others. Its typical in Italy to wash down a meal with a couple of shots. We overdid it a bit maybe and pounded 3 of the bottles.


I spent some time looking around this old church and ended up taking a fair few shots.


Old guy had had enough after getting out of his car with all the gear.


In the graveyard behind the church. Looks very peaceful.





Crosscountry skiing is huge in St Moritz. Good way to see the countryside.

Big change of weather today. The warm wind arrived and over the space of about 3 hours the snow slumped about a meter. Nearly broke my heart. Oh well, time to put the puffer jacket away and get used to the smell of rotting boots.


These things stop the mountains crashing down.


Galzig Gondola. I was standing underneath waiting for the sun


Little dude helping out shoveling snow off the roof

Last day of shooting with the PEOPLE crew. We went back to a previous jump and built it a bit different. Seth got 2 tricks straight away and was stoked. I got sick of my angles and hiked a round to find something new. It paid off and I got the stoke back. I was tucked under this tree shooting the riders going overhead when Seth messed up his take-off and smashed through the tree. I saw him coming, took a picture and suddenly realized that he was coming straight at me. I threw myself forward and he landed 5cm behind my shoulder. I didn't really think more about it till I saw Cory's film shot. Seth's steel edges missed my head by a few centimeters. Pretty scary.


Cory filming the boys dropping the Avi barriers. Christian Brecheis from Pleasure Mag joined us for the day.


This is the shot of Seth just before I realized i was about to get my head chopped off