The Teva Mountain Games are stuffed to the absolute limit with whitewater paddling, rock wall crushing, dirt jump soaring action. But there are two things that that I might like more than the non-stop adrenaline rush of all the competitions, and those are the Emotion and the Lifestyle of the event. For all the athletes who compete, and more than likely the majority of the audience, these sport aren’t just activities, they’re a way of life. And in any given sport at the games you’ve got some of the best in the world competing against each other, and what’s best is, they’re all friends. So as you can imagine, there’s a lot of emotion in the air, as some of the best athletes in their discipline’s compete among friends for in the sport they live for. On top of that, you’ve got the hordes of spectators who are also passionate about outdoor sports, the gorgeous setting of Vail Valley, and the totally rockin’ nightlife like the free Julian Marley concert you see at the top. What I’m trying to say is, you really should have been there.

Hit the Jump for more images!

                          

Don’t let the name fool you, these images are actually from the semi-finals and finals, but that would have made for a crappy title. Here are my best action photos from the World Cup crush fest, and after this I’ll be doing one more post on the lifestyle, behind the scenes and emotions of the Teva Mountain Games. Then it’s time to move on. I don’t really have much to say, other than the fact that all of the World Cup competitors all did awesome jobs and the climbing action was non-stop, so I’ll just let the images speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Hit the jump for the rest of the images!

For those of you wanting more info about how the Bouldering comp went down, here are a few places that have done better jobs of reporting than I could do if I felt like trying:

The Spot Route Setting Blog and ClimbingNarc

                          

Saturday night was the final round for The Spot Gym’s Battle In The Bubble bouldering competition, and it was off the hook! The Spot pulled out all the stops for this awesome night of elite climbing. It seemed that there was a bit of a hitch at the beginning when one of the first problems was missing it’s starting hold. But everyone was pretty stoked to find out that it was being delivered via skydiving. A few minutes later the hold was on the ground, bolted to the wall, the competition was underway and the action didn’t stop until 4 hours later when the final problems went down to the two winners. Hit the jump for a breakdown and my favorite images of the event.

Julian Bautista on the 4th Men's problem.

The last of finals problems was done in a format I’ve never seen before, where the final two men’s and women’s climbers traded turns, going head to head; and whoever sends first, wins.  I was hoping that no one would just step right up and crush it, because this is the Battle In The Bubble, and I wanted to see something epic happen. Well, the event delivered! Daniel Woods and Julian Bautista were the final two men’s competitors and Alex Puccio and Angie Payne were the final women’s competitors. The route setters did a fantastic job making sure that no one got the send without working it first. The action was amazing!  Fall after fall, they traded turns trying to get the first ascent of the men’s or women’s final problem. Julian and Angie both put in awesome efforts and did some top form climbing, but then Daniel and Alex finally each stepped up to their respective problems and just absolutely crushed them, as if they hadn’t really been trying until then. It was truly a great comp, and I’m stoked to see The Spot pushing the limits of what a climbing comp can be!

Daniel Woods taking first place.

Carlo Traversi sending hard early in the game.

Kevin Jorgenson keeping the crowd amped with free t-shirts.

Alex Puccio sticking it on the 4th women's problem.

Angie Payne on the 5th women's problem.

Carlo Traversi getting ready to throw down.

Daniel Woods about to crush.

Carlo Traversi going for it on the 4th men's problem.

The action packed final round! Daniel and Alex on the wall.

                          

Last night was the first night of the much anticipated Battle In The Bubble bouldering competition, which is being put on by The Spot climbing gym in Boulder. Competitors were trying to qualify for the main action, which will be tonight. There are a lot of things that are unique about this comp. For starters the finals tonight are going to be held outdoors at the Boulder Reservoir. But also, the top 20 men and 20 women from last night will go into the semi-finals this morning, and have a chance to advance to the Pro Invitational Finals tonight. The finals won’t be like most comps, where all the final climbers climb each route and are then judged according to their cumulative performance. Instead, some climbers will be eliminated after each one of the 4 finals routes. It will be a much faster and more brutal form of elimination. If you suck it up on one problem, there is no making it up on the next one. Your just gone. Sounds like it will be extra nerve racking. I can’t wait to see what kind of mutant climbing action my lens can capture tonight! For now, hit the jump for a few more of my favorites from last night.

                          

Err, I mean Winner. And, I mean Are. There are two of you, and you’re not wieners. You’re winners. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Two weeks ago, I started a contest to win a copy of my 2009 Teva Mountain Games photo book. After realizing that I had no plan for how this contest was to end, other than that someone would win, I decided that the activity seems to have ended, and it is now over. I jotted down everyone’s answers and compared them to my own picks, and come to the troubling conclusion that there was a tie. No one had guessed all three, but two people had guessed two out of three. And what’s more, they picked the same two; meaning that I couldn’t just go for the person that picked the better two. I saw that I only had two choices. I either pick based on which of their third picks I like best (and what could be less fair in a contest that is clearly already governed by “what I say goes”?) or, they both win. I went with the latter. Find out my favorite three, why I like them and who the winners are after the jump!

So let’s get to it. At the top was Numero Uno. That is hands down my favorite image of the whole event. I love this image for many reasons, like it’s significance, it’s energy, it’s complexity, my own attachment and how much it illustrates the craziness of the Bouldering World Cup event. In this image you see Jonas Bauman on the left, climbing for Germany, and Alex Johnson on the right, climbing for USA. At an event like this you have many of the top climbers in the world, all in the same place, and frequently climbing at the same time. Many times the problem isn’t whether or not something awesome is happening, but which of the many awesome things currently happening you want to point your camera at. The stage was set. Alex was on the final Women’s problem and Jonas was on the final Men’s problem. Both were serious contenders for first place. I had my eye to the camera tracking Alex as she went up the route, when I see out of the corner of my eye that Jonas approaching the top of his route. Pause. People had been flying off the Men’s final problem for the last hour. The last move was huge, and left the climber with feet swinging and two bad hand holds, trying to arrest a lot of momentum. It was Jonas’s first burn and no one has stuck it on their first try yet. Play. I see a burst of movement from my left eye and swing my camera over to just barely catch Jonas sticking the move to take first place. He then proceeds to freak out and celebrate while hanging on to the finishing hold, which can be seen in the original post’s slideshow. I’ll be totally honest and say that this is one of those magical shots that is 95% luck and you can’t take much credit for. I like that I somehow managed to get both of them in the frame. But what I love the most is the juxtaposition of their bodies and the way that Jonas’s wildly swinging legs don’t obscure any part of Alex, which can mostly be attributed to good fortune. Alex went on to take second place.

And that bring us to my second favorite.  This was on the lat day of the event and all of the climbing events were finished, so I figured I would check out some of these “other sports” people kept talking about.  I headed east from Vail Village towards Vail pass, which would be the steepest part of the time-trial distance bike race.  Positioning myself near the top of the climb, I expected that I would be in a good place to document some suffering.  What I wasn’t expecting was to see aHoney Stinger rider doing Gladitorial battle with the hill.  This guy was a beast.  Here he comes, ripping up the hill like it’s a bump in the road, with a ferocity the would fit right in with Brad Pitt and the rest of the Myrmidons charging the beaches of Troy.  I saw him coming and started unloading.  I didn’t need to look at the back of the camera to know that something awesome just happened.  Everything about this scene was completely epic.  In fact, the Lightroom preset that I used to start the editing process on this photo was even styled after the movie ’300′.  Naturally, it was a perfect fit.  My only hesitation was that I hoped he wasn’t faking the look because he saw the guy with the camera.  But a few weeks later I ran into another Honey Stinger rider at the Summer Outdoor Retailer and I asked him if he could identify the cycling combatant.  He took one look at the photo and said, “Oh yeah.  That’s Ben Portilla.  He always looks pissed when he’s riding.”  Done.  Anything that was holding this photo from my top 3 just got cut down by the confirmation of Ben Portilla’s “always pissed” riding face.

Lastly.  And by ‘lastly’, I mean ‘in third place’.  This was an image that resulted from wandering around at the end of the day with a camera still around my neck.    I saw this girl with a friend, standing and talking on the flanks of of a evening concert audience.  They were laughing and having a good time.  Something about the jacket, the background colors, and the fact that she just had an incredibly natural and great looking smile immediately grabbed my attention, and I had to grab a few frames.  It wasn’t until I downloaded and started editing that I realized how much I liked this image.  I don’t think I could have done any better if I had complete creative control over location, wardrobe and model choice, and was directing the scene.  Sometimes images just come to you as a complete package and all you have to do is be there and see it.

What is common in all three photos is the element of luck or serendipity.  I think as a photographer, you can do everything right on you part; have the right gear, know how to use it, be in the right place, and be ready.  But the thing that takes an image from top 50 to top 3 always comes as a gift from your subject. And speaking of gifts, the winner are…

Katie L and Dave M!  Congratulations, you are the (hopefully) proud new owners of a 2009 Teva Mountain Games image book.  Thanks to everyone who guessed, and get ready for more action packed images from the 2010 Games in June!

                          

Last weekend I headed down to Ouray for the annual Ouray Ice Festival.  As promised, here is a slide show of some images I took during my trip.  This weekend I’m goingto be snowmobiling in Steamboat Springs with a bunch of high schoolers.  Then next week I’m off to SLC for the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market.  Enjoy!

                          

No, that’s not the new motto around here, but it’s pretty funny. And funny, is how I like to start the New Year. For all the beautiful places I’ve been this year and great athletes I’ve photographed, this might be my favorite image of the year. I took it at a bar in Keystone, and something about the colors, simplicity, balance, warmth and crispness of it, not to mention the fact that it’s hilarious, really captures me. 2010 has started off with a bang, and a lot has just changed. There’s a pile of good times on the horizon, so keep reading for a breakdown of what’s new, what’s old and a slide show of some of my favorite 2009 images that don’t already appear somewhere on the webpage.  Enjoy!

New Year. December 31st marked the end of my first year in business as a full-time adventure photographer, and I have to say that I’m pretty happy with the way it went. In 2009 I spent a month living in Joshua Tree National Park in California with an old friend and a new friend, climbed and shot in the dry deserts and lush mountains of Utah, failed miserably at climbing the Grand Teton, spent 4 weeks gallivanting around the northeast collecting an array of images, went back to J-Tree for another week, logged well over 100 hours of road trip time, took over 30,000 images, almost died 3 times and much more. Not a bad start. If I can continue the trend of visiting and photographing beautiful places, while lowering the occurrence of near death experiences, it’ll be a pretty good beginning to 2010. There’s a lot on the horizon that I’m excited about. Some things are planned, some things are prospective, some things are just ideas and hopes, and the more I think about it all, the more it fills me with energy to make it all happen.  Stay tuned!

New Website. For the better half of 2009, getting a new website was high on my list of things to do. The old one was a template site and wasn’t customizable enough for me, was to limiting, and in my opinion, just wasn’t professional looking. I wanted something completely original, completely me. So why did it take so long? Because I was originally hung up on the idea of doing it myself. I got books on HTML and CSS, watched a bunch of tutorials, and tried to learn everything. Us creative types are usually also control freaks and want to exercise our creativity in every possible arena. But that mentality often just causes us to be distracted from whatever it is that we’re really trying to accomplish. Luckily, I got wise (it happens ever now and then) and realized that if I continued trying to do it myself it would not be done for many more months. Not only that, but it would also considerably pull me away from my real objective, which is growth as a photographer, not a web developer.

That’s when I decided to bring in some back up, er, someone to do almost all the work.  I went to my friend and climbing partner Jeremy Fields, who just so happens to also be a professional web developer.  He agreed to “help” me build the site.  Jeremy is absolutely fantastic to work with, and as I already knew, is a great guy.  He is very prompt, professional, creative, easygoing, and very talented.  Thanks to him, the website is ready now, not the six months from now/never that it would of been if I had continued trying it myself.  A few weeks ago, I was talking with a photographer friend of mine, and he said something that stuck with me: Do what you’re good at, and outsource the rest.  That’s not always an option, but when it is, it seems to be a good plan.  I think this a a great example of that in action.  Thanks Jeremy!

New Blog. I always felt that the old blog had a bit of an identity crisis.  What was it about?  Genny and I?  Climbing?  Photography?  Pictures and stories?  Nothing?  Who was it written for?  Friends and family?  Photographers?  Adventurers?  With this new blog I hope to remedy that problem.  The old blog will stay active and will go back to it’s original purpose of just being about the life and adventures of Ben and Genny.  This blog will take a more professional look at my life as an adventure photographer.  Meaningless diatribe and incessant rambling might will yield way to more purposed content.  I will still share lots of stories and photos from the field, but will also begin including some posts that will have a little more substance for photographers, while hopefully also still having some significance for the non photographic folks out there.  I will also delve into the occasional gear related post, talking about what I use and why, and about what ever kind of cool new toys that are out there for photographers and adventurers alike.  My mission is to have a well balanced mix of content that has something for everyone.

New Resolution. No, I’m not talking about higher megapixels. That hasn’t changed.  I mean the kind of resolution one tends to make around New Years.  I’m generally not the type for any kind of resolutions, but I’ve been trying to be more intentional about setting goals and pursuing growth as a photographer and as a person.  A few weeks ago, I came up with a rather odd goal and I’ve recently decided to make it my theme for 2010.  My new resolution is *drumroll*… to take more bad pictures.  This of course is not to be confused with wanting to take less good pictures.  Now most photographers would probably agree with me that taking bad photos isn’t really something you need to put effort into.  It generally just happens all on it’s own.  I’m not talking about those mistakes, things like missed focus, bad exposures or poor framing.

If there’s one skill that I certainly have, it’s the ability to know ahead of time what things I’ll be good at and only do those, while at the same time completely avoiding the things that I know I’ll be bad at.  It’s great for appearing like you are good at everything, but it’s terrible for growth as a person, since it causes me to skip the part of life that might have the opportunity for failure.  The kind of bad photos I’m looking for are the kind that come from experimentation, the kind that come from not knowing how something is going to turn out, or the kind that come from intentionally working with subject matter that you know is boring just to see if you can capture it an interesting way.  The bottom line is that sometimes a great image only comes on the tail end of a bunch of crap.  As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed 10,000 times.  I have successfully found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  So, now I will welcome failure as part of the path to becoming a better photographer and as part of pursuing perfection.

And that’s what’s going on in my world.  It seems like 2010 will be all about ‘more’.  More trips, more mistakes, more growth, and hopefully, more great images.  So, now you’re all caught up.  Moving on.  This weekend I’ll be hanging out, climbing and shooting in Ouray, CO for the annual Ice Festival.  Keep you eye out for some fun images upon my return. Peace!

Scroll down for the slide show.