Looking at an Instagram post, it’s easy to assume a shoot day is just a normal ski day with someone taking photos on the side. A few runs, a few good moments, done.
Actually, the day is spent mostly standing around in the snow. A lot of “hang on”, “one more”, and “no, not like that.”
It sounds annoying, but that’s just what a ski photo shoot is.
In February, we were lucky enough to get three ski legends, Wil Comrie, Luc Neron, and Jason Simpson, at Hakuba 47 and convinced them that it was worth the effort for a photo shoot.
And while we could have just written to tell you how epic it was, we thought we should share some of the effort that goes into making a day like this happen.
Shout-out to Nataliya and @fluid.pictures for the behind-the-scenes footage.
Most of it is talking
People imagine you ski a run, someone takes a photo, and you move on. What really happens is a lot of stopping and starting. You stop at the top and talk through the next run.
Where’s the camera going to be? What line are we taking? Who’s going first? How close do we want to be?
Then you ski it, and at the bottom, someone looks at what came out and goes, “Okay, but…” And then you do it again.
That’s basically the entire day.
It’s not complicated. It’s repetitive.
You plan every run, because you kind of have to
On a normal day, you can just ski and let things happen. On a shoot day, if you “just ski,” you end up with a pile of stuff that almost works.
So you have to plan each run, even if it’s quick.
Sometimes it’s literally: “Let’s do that same pitch again. Camera here. Wil leads. Luc second. Jason third. Give it more space. Drop five seconds after the camera gets set.”
Then you go. And half the time, you come back and realize one piece wasn’t quite right, so you adjust and go again.
And sometimes it’s not even about the skiing — it’s just that the angle made the slope look flat, or there was too much traffic, or the light changed, or you can’t get the camera where you wanted without wasting half the morning.
The resort doesn’t make it “easy”
People hear “resort shoot” and assume it’s smooth because you’ve got lifts and you’re not hiking.
The lifts help, obviously. But resort shoots still have their own problems.
You’re dealing with other skiers, and that affects everything. The run you want is suddenly busy. Someone cruises through your shot. You’re trying not to camp out in the middle of a piste while people are coming through. You’re trying to keep it moving so it doesn’t turn into a lot of waiting around and losing momentum.
And the mountain changes on you. Light shifts. Visibility changes. The snow feels different. A shot that looked good at 10:00 looks washed out at 11:30.
So a lot of the day is making calls quickly and not getting stuck.
The resets are normal
This is the part that looks boring from the outside, but it’s the whole job.
A take doesn’t work for some reason — spacing is off, timing is off, the camera angle didn’t read, someone got too close, someone drifted too wide, whatever — and you reset.
What matters is whether people stay switched on through that, because it’s easy for a day to get sloppy when you’re repeating things.
Having three guys like that there changes the day
If you’ve worked with strong, experienced skiers on a shoot day, you know what we mean. Things don’t get overcomplicated. People don’t need long explanations. Nobody’s pretending it’s fun when it’s not. You just do the work.
Wil, Luc, and Jason were like that. Quick decisions, no drama, no dragging things out. If something needed another go, they were fine with it. If something wasn’t working, they didn’t force it for an hour.
That makes a huge difference to how the day feels.
The part nobody sees: we end with a mountain of stuff
By the end of the day, you’ve got loads of material.
And most of it is not going anywhere.
Some of it is close, but not quite. Some of it is basically the same thing from five angles. Some of it is fine, but it doesn’t stand out. Some of it looked good in the moment, but doesn’t read on a screen. Some of it is just unusable because someone cut through, or the spacing fell apart, or the angle was wrong.
The “brutal ratio”: you spend a full day and might only end up with a small handful of things you actually want to post.
Then the day keeps going, just not on skis
After the hill, you still have to go through everything. Sort it. Cut it down. Clean it up. Decide what’s worth posting and what’s not. Try to make it look simple without making it feel fake.
And that takes time. Sometimes it takes more time than the shoot did.
So when someone sees a finished post and thinks it was a quick lap with a camera… yeah. Not really.
Thank You to Wil Comrie, Luc Neron, and Jason Simpson
A shoot day asks a lot from the skiers.
Not “hard skiing,” necessarily. More like patience and attention. Being willing to stop. Being willing to repeat. Being willing to stay engaged when the fun part is broken up by a lot of process.
Wil, Luc, and Jason put the time in – we noticed, and we appreciate it.
That’s the story.
It wasn’t magic. It was a proper working day on snow and of course, lots of fun!