2026 WINTER OLYMPICS

SHOOT BRIEF
NBC News commissioned me to photograph a series of Team USA freestyle ski athletes training in Park City, Utah in the summer months before the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy.

Over the course of two days we conducted several mini shoots with athletes. The art director asked me to get weird – use flash, blur, creative angles, etc. Additionally, the stories were not going to run as a series, so they wanted some distinct looks between them.

Of course, these are world-class athletes in the height of training for their Olympic appearances, so each minute with athletes were precious. My time with the athletes ranged from 5 minutes to one hour.

The highlight was photographing Mac Forehand training for a pretty insane trick called a switch triple cork 1980 mute. I had a couple of warmup runs to get some filler content, but then Mac said he would attempt the trick twice. The folks at NBC had requested a stop-motion type video, so I rigged one camera on a tripod to shoot 30 fps while I handheld a second camera for additional images. I could have been happy if he’d run the trick through about ten times, but in the end I think we pulled it off.