During Outdoor Retailer I got to spend some time with my good friends from Team YogaSlackers. I only briefly met them about 8 months ago at the 2009 Teva Mountain Games, but then I ran into them again at the Summer OR show. After talking at various times throughout the show we decided to head up into Little Cottonwood Canyon the day after for an acro-yoga photo shoot and some climbing, and that began a great friendship and working relationship. This time around, on the last night of the OR show, we got together for something a little different… pizza and a movie. We had thought about trying to get out and shoot something together, but it never really came together. So we were plenty content to just hang out.
More story after the jump, and a link for an interview of me by Inner Passage’s Matt Walker.
We headed over to Sandi and Bob’s place, who were kindly putting up with the Team while they were in SLC. We should have known better than to think that cameras wouldn’t eventually come out and that everything wouldn’t evolve into a acro session. What started out as a basic acro-yoga lesson for us noobs, turned into a lot of goofing off, which yielded a holy-crap-that-might-just-work moment and two hours of further experimentation. Late in the night, with the cameras rolling, the new move dubbed “Lev”itation was born. It was super great to spend time with the YogaSlackers, and to meet Sandi, Bob and Lev. And it was great to be a part of the playful experimentation that yielded a new trick… even if my part was just to yell bad advice and awkward support straight into the microphone that was ten inches from my face. This was also the first piece of worthwhile video footage that I’ve captured with my new Pentax K-7 DSLR, although it was edited by someone else (Chip Fieberg, if I’m not mistaken), and I’m excited to begin exploring the ways the video can synergize into what I already do.
The relationship I’ve built with Team YogaSlackers has really helped me understand the personal and professional benefits of taking things into the realm of friendship instead of just leaving them in the acquaintance column. Not only is it so much more enjoyable to work with friends, but it usually ends up yielding more professional gains for both parties. When you have a lot of respect for the quality of what someone does, and you really like them as a person, you’re going to want to work with them and promote them so much more than if you only had one of those sentiments towards them. That’s how I feel about the YogaSlackers. Not only are they all amazing athletes, but they’re also some of the coolest people I know. And thanks to them, I’ve made some great images over the last 8 months, and have two exciting things in store for the next 6 months.
Another great example of being intentional about building a relationship with is my friend Matt Walker who recently did an interview of me on his website. Matt is a climbing guide from Tucson, AZ and is also the principal leader at Inner Passage, where he leads adventure outings designed to help people build and develop their leadership skills and potential. I met Matt during my first trip to Joshua Tree, and only for about 45 minutes. We swapped info, because I snapped a few shot of him working with his clients, but also because I liked what he did and knew he would be a great guy to stay in contact with. That 45 minutes was actually the only time we’ve ever seen each other. We almost got together at last summer’s Outdoor Retailer show, and I was supposed to go visit Tucson, but that fell through. So our contact for the last year has been made up entirely of Twitter and Facebook conversations and a handful of emails, but we’ve been able to stay in touch and build a friendship none the less. If things play out well, I’ll be heading to Tucson in the next month or two to work on a project with him.
About a month and a half ago, Matt found out I was building a new website. He messaged me and said that when it was done he would love to ask me a few interview questions and do a profile about me and Fullerton Images on his website. I, of course, said yes. So be sure to check out the interview, where I get entirely to visceral and touchy-feely about my approach to photography. And a big thanks to Matt, for pulling that together and wanting to help me promote the new website. Hopefully I’ll actually get to hang out with him again someday soon.
Above is Matt working with a client during our first and only meeting in Joshua Tree NP.
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