The weather forecast for the next days reported excellent weather conditions without clouds. A perfect opportunity to realize my long-planned project.
A prolonged lighting shot, in which a snowboarder gets frozen during a handplant with a flash and a light circle above him is projected with a drone in the sky.
I had taken some test photos with the drone before, but never with a snowboarder riding in the backcountry in the late evening with freezing cold, winds at 1600 m.a.s.l. and lots of electronics and batteries...
Whether it would succeed was still unclear at that moment. Because some factors had to work together, as I later found out.
I arranged to meet Thomas K‰lin and Deniz Cinek. They are two handplant experts, an experienced team, and the guarantors for a successful photo session, no matter if there is a photo of the day or not. Fun and good friendship are always a priority for them. However, it is precisely for this reason that good photos are usually taken spontaneously with them.
Since I knew that it would be a very long day until late into the night, we went to our NBC (NaturalBornChillaz Crew) Homebase at Hoch Ybrig in Switzerland around noon.
We set off with snowshoes and a lot of equipment on our back, such as shovels, camera, tripod, radio, flash unit, LED headlights and a drone equipped with 2 LED lamps, spare batteries, food and drink for refreshment.
So we had enough light to see something off the pistes at night and to find our way back to the valley.
When I arrived at the planned location, I had the feeling of finding a beautiful panorama for the photo and immediately started looking for the right perspective. Based on this, we positioned the quarterpipe on the crest.
We illuminated the route with LED lamps and two flashes I positioned behind the quarterpipe, which I then triggered at the right moment by radio remote control. The illumination of the mountain comes from the two LED lights of the drone.
As long as it was still bright, Thomas and Deniz had enough time to come in, and I made the final preparations. All that was missing was a small platform to launch and land the drone in the deep snow.
When the whole setup was finished, we waited for the shooting until there was no more ambient light. Finally, the show started. Thomas and Deniz were ready at the top, and I flew the drone over the quarterpipe. There I circled them with a 5-meter radius. I gave Thomas the signal to start ridding and then released the camera for 20 seconds.
At the right moment of the handplant, I also triggered the flashes using the radio. This turned out to be extremely difficult, as I was quite far away, the radio connection didn't always work and hardly saw the right moment at this distance in the darkness.
The first rechargeable battery from the drone was already exhausted after a few attempts. The other two batteries were already damaged shortly after the take off by the cold, without even a photo.
So we only had two left, which lasted only 10 minutes each, because of the cold and the weight of the LED lamps on the drone. Instead of the usual 20 minutes of flight.
As time passed, I was also suffering from the cold. I didn't feel my fingers and feet anymore after standing for so long.
In the end, we succeeded in taking this photo. We are happy with the end result as everything works together perfectly. You get the feeling that Thomas K‰lin is snowboarding on another planet thanks to the stars and the ambiance.