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A gashed chin, a whale swimming and a man peering from a frost-covered tent in the snow are not typical ski and snowboard photos. But Tero Repo is not your usual ski and snowboard photographer. His work veers from the peak action shots you're used to and focuses instead on the moments between the madness so viewers might live the life of the athletes vicariously.
While the life can be glamorous -- there are many photographers and skiers who would say Repo has the best job in the world -- it's the zenith of a career trajectory that started with barely getting by.
“The budget after rent and the ski pass was $10-$15 per day,” says Repo, who is based in Verbier, Switzerland. “I always ate well and made sure it wasn’t just pasta and ketchup, but I really had to calculate whether I could afford to go into a bar and drink a beer.”
Now Repo spends several months each year shooting athletes in some of the most beautiful spots on Earth. A few things helped Repo break into a notoriously tricky industry. First, he met and worked with the right people. His first big contact was Xavier de Le Rue, who quickly became one of the most important big mountain snowboarders in the world. De Le Rue was willing to ride almost anything, which helped Repo come back with pictures unlike anything anyone else was shooting.
And second, Repo developed a shooting style all his own. In an industry where it’s easy to make your photos look exactly like the next guy’s, Repo found a way to differentiate his work so it caught the eyes of photo editors at several magazines. He goes beyond the stereotypical glory shots to tell stories.
“The action photos make the athletes look like superheroes,” he says. “But I know viewers want to see that they are also normal people. They eat the same pizza, use the same toothpaste and ride the same ski lift.”
Repo continues to innovate. He's recently taken to using huge flashes to illuminate the skiers and the terrain to create eye-catching compositions. In a way, the ski and snowboard photography biz has reached a saturation point for finding new and crazier feats. What keeps fans coming back for more are the unique stories. It's just a matter of finding exciting ways to capture them.
“I think the whole industry is going to have to change how it shoots because I don’t know if anyone can jump gnarlier cliffs or ski steeper faces,” he says. “I think there is still storytelling to be done.”
