Jury 2010
Dave Reddick
PHOTO EDITOR / CREATIVE DIRECTOR, POWDER AND BIKE MAGAZINES (USA)
Dave Reddick's story reads a bit like one of those old CBS Back-to-School Specials. Kid gets camera, starts shooting photos of his buddies skiing, and dreams of being a professional ski photographer. Kid goes to college, works hard in photojournalism school, lands internship, works his way up the ladder, and eventually becomes staff photographer and photo editor of a major ski magazine.
Only thing missing from his story is the cheesy drama. All joking aside, Dave basically had a dream - and now he's living it. For the past 18 years, he's been photo editing Powder as well as its sister publication Bike magazine. Though the pair of magazines focus on completely different sports, Dave thrives on it. “They kind of compliment each other. I think there's a lot of similarities between skiing and mountain biking. They feed off each other and you find a lot of people that overlap and do both sports,” he says. “From a work perspective though it's absolutely a full load, but it's something I enjoy immensely.”
What was his favorite cover shot for the magazine? "We were in Bansko, Bulgaria, a pretty exotic location, fantastic ski area, but it turned out that at the base of the ski area they had artists come in and create these ice sculptures that looked like big spines, like Hershey's Kisses almost but they went super vert about 35 feet high. They weren't really meant to be skied. So we wound up using snowmobiles to tow the guys into these things. They were reaching all the way up to the very top and riding them like a quarter pipe."
What advice would you give photographers hoping to get their images published? “Shoot what you feel. Don't try to duplicate what you've seen published. Distinguish yourself. If you're at an event for instance, take a look at where the other photographers are and do the opposite."
