In the middle of the winter I received a phone call from my friend Caroline Béliard. She told me that she just got married in Las Vegas with Gary Zebrowski, and that they will celebrate the wedding again in Tahiti in May, the natal island of Gary and I should be part of the trip. Waoww, that was an amazing news. They had been dating for only a few months and were already married. Why not? She is totally the kind of person spontaneous enough to do something crazy like that.

And this is how 10 friends met in Tahiti for 3 amazing weeks in paradise. What else to say? The pictures will talk by themselves.

When we arrived at the airport

The garden and the house

The lovers making the barbecue

Chilling time

The swimming pool

Enjoying the sunset

Morea under the sunset, our next step

Morning surf

Gary Zebrowski

Sylvain Bourbousson

Remi Lamazouere

Gary Zeborwski killing it

Caroline Graeff and Franck Corbery

Teahupoo after the Billabong pro

The forest, looks like amazonia

Vaimahuta waterfall

After 6 months on the snow, the season ended with still lot of snow on the mountain. Last year around this time i went to Sweden for 3 more weeks but this year i finish it earlier and now i started working on all the pictures to send them to magazines, it’s the most boring part of the job, hours and hours in front of the computer, it was so much different few years ago when we were still shooting analog.

Enjoy your summer holidays, i’ll have mine really soon and can’t wait to be on that paradise….

One week in Avoriaz with the Bataleon rider’s, check this out!!!

Tyler slashing Johacim’s face

Gulli found a strange bench on the park

Psykopit crew is still here

Chill time waiting for the sunset, what should we do then,….

… maybe a contest of the worst style on the smallest mail box ever….

… this is a really funny idea…

and the winner is,… David Van Gessel!!!!

Kalle Ohlson for the sunset session without the sunset

thanks to the shapers for the sled and their patience

2 kids were sleeping on the floor like 2 drunky guys after a big party so Johacim and David decided to join them

Cheers!!!!!!!

Ghetto style

And now the party started….

the moustache crew

Check out the Bataleon website on http://www.bataleon.com/

Thank you to Anne-flore for this text and for being part of this amazing week.

MBM session Austria

I love it when I get to go back to Europe and shoot with euro snowboarders, even more when I get to travel with my good friend Vanessa Andrieux. I showed up in Bad Gastein Austria for the MBM session (Snowboarder Monster Backside Magazine, german mag).  The concept of the week is that about 10+ photographers show up with some riders and each crew tries to get better photos than the others, on the same days and on the same mountain.

My team was composed by Gully, fellow shredder from Iceland, and myself with Vanessa as team captain. We were all staying in the same huge 19^th century hotel which allowed all of us to hang after the shred, it was super fun and felt like a big summer camp!

Bad Gastein is a old times luxurious natural hot spring resort with an impressive waterfall right in the center of town with a beautiful view over the valley. Most buildings were built late 19^th century, they are tall and impressive. I was waiting the whole time to come across Sissi the Empress (Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, 19th Century) in the streets, or hearing Schubert play piano.

The snow conditions were really bad when we got there! The slopes were covered with mud, ice and rocks..  and there was absolutely no snow left around, and it started raining!But we got so lucky as the rain transformed into snow! And it dumped just enough to cover most of the off pists and all the logs.. and it turned out to be sick!!The funny thing is that non of us had ridden in that resort before.. so no one had any idea of where to find spots to shoot.. and the other surprise was that we weren’t able to drive out to the slopes in the morning because they hadn’t cleaned up the roads after the snowfall.. We gave up after a good half an hour of pushing the car and were lucky enough to catch a ride with the belgium’s crew who had chains. We ended up shredding with them all day. We jumped in the cabin and we were lucky enough to spot a pretty cool pillow-line right under the lift that no one had hit yet. Once out of the lift we realized that the powder was knee deep and even though that pow was still a bit wet and heavy it turned out to be really fun and easy to shred! So we hit those pillows got a couple shots and took the bus back to the hotel as the fog had come up.

Pretty good for a first day in bad weather for sure!That night we went up to a tipical austrian restaurant, were we would later come down on sleds! And the fun started right away with a general snowball fight! I could have stayed out and kept doing that the whole night!

That’s where we got to meet everyone else. Some riders from Finland, Switzlerland, Slovenia, Austria, France, Norway, Sweden, Belgium..etc.. and my friend Niels was there too! Niels is a kid from Geneva.. he is awesome and super funny! It was so fun to get to hang with him and the 2 other kids of his crew!! And the ride down was super fun with a small jump at the end! fun enough to go back up and do it again.. even if it meant missing the cab and walk home.. but of course with those kids the “walk” home turned into a snowball purchase through the whole village! Hihi! Love these!

The next day we woke up in the bad weather and didn’t stress too much about being up there.. but once in the gondola we realized that the sun was shining above the clouds! We first went on the same mountain again.. but there were so many crews already that we ran away to the next part of the resort where we directly spotted a really cool step down over a cliff. it was a sweet almost natural hit! It was very hot that day and the snow transformed into spring slush.. but still easy to land on. The spot worked out pretty well even though the landing was cooked by the time we were done with it!

When we got back everyone I crossed told me that my face was very red! That’s when I realized that the sunscreen I had been using that day was in fact after sun lotion!! I love it when you get a really tomato red face.. it always helps being ridiculously good looking!!

On the 3^rd day we hiked about an hour up above the slopes top to find a cool kicker spot. It was so hot again and we were sweating big time! The snow was still good in the landing and the 3 three of us shaped a humongus kicker in 2 hours. The monster was 2.20m tall and 2 boards wide! That’s probably because Vanessa was shaping! She always makes such HUGE blocks! Anyways when I hit the kicker for the first time, the sun had been so hot already that my board really sunk into the kicker which was way too soft because of the heat and of course the landing was really bad by then. It was a bit. sketchy to ride, and I did tumble couple times, but it worked out at the end.

We were especially tired that day after the hike and the shaping and it was a pleasure to take my boots off and die on my bed!

After that the weather wasn’t as good anymore and the avalanche danger was way too high for us to go hit the backcountry. We took it easy and went partying! It was the GIRLS night out.. cause the 50 other guys just stayed in and went to bed.. besides the 2 swiss guys.. so that was 4 of us in a pretty empty bar.. with only Swedish tourists as party mates! It started quietly playing dice and turn out to be quite rock n roll! I woke up the next day with a moustache drawn on my face and Vanessa’s gracious after party voice!

Luckily I had been drinking water that night which made the 10 hours drive home much easier on the next day!

Thanks a lot to MBM for this super fun week www.snowboardermbm.de

And to Bad Gastein for inviting us to their beautiful resort! www.skigastein.com

It seems this winter the snow won’t stop to fall of in Europe, after the Wangl i had one week to shoot with Arthur Longo and Gerome Mathieu, first we were suppose to go to st moritz and after few phone calls we figured out that it was way better to stay in Mayrhofen at least for few more days as we got fresh snow there.

We were lucky with the forecast it was suppose to be bad the 2 first days and we got a lot of sunny windows so we’ve been shooting kikers. The 3rd day it started snowing again and we found few spots in the middle of some avalanches protections walls.

To end up the week we wanted to go to Arlberg as we heard they’ve got a lot of snow there, so in the morning we packed all our stuff and drove 2 hours. We went strait to a spot next to the road to shoot some pillow lines and drops in the forest.

The next day we went to Sonnenkopf which is at the other side of the pass and as we arrived there in the morning we met 4 other crews that had the same plan than us.

I didn’t think that end of march it could be that much snow, i had powder up to my stomach while i was hiking to find some angles. It such a weird winter, the day after the sun came out and the air temperature skyrocket and the snow get so heavy that was hardly ridable.

check out what i get for my birthday present from all my friends, still didn’t see it in real, can’t wait!!!!!

Thank to David for bringing it from Australia.

Was my first time at the Wangl Tangl in Mayrhofen and i’m really stoked that i’ve been there, it’s such a great event, everything was perfect except the weather condition but we could have one good weather day and was enough to make few pictures.

check out the report on the Aesthetiker website

While i was in Montafon, i had my 30th birthday the 2nd march, hard to accept that i’m already 30, time goes so fast, it’s been 10 years since i’ve made my first picture, but when i’m looking back, i don’t have any regret, i’ve just been enjoying every moment.

Enough for the psychology part, let’s talk about my birthday party. It was such a great party, every body was so much into having fun and getting wasted, my 2 friends Margot Rozies and Lisa Filzmoser that were in Montafon as well join us, the  AC bar just opened for us and few bottles of champagne were drunk.

Everything was perfect except a little slide on the dance floor that makes me fall down and twist my ankle, i knew strait away that was really bad but i just keep on enjoying the party, the day after i’ve got a nice surprice when i dicover my ankle, was twice bigger than normally. Hard to believe than with my job and what i’m doing every day i could get hurt on a dance floor, but shit happen and i’m not 20 anymore.

To close this event i wanted to thanks all my friends that offered me a surf board for this summer, it’s such a nice present, i can’t wait to see it and try it and crash with it….

And thanks to Paco for the party’s pictures.

I was suppose to make a trip in the Pyrenees but it was canceled last minute, i didn’t even had time to find an other option that i’ve got a phone call from Tyler Chorlton that asked me to come shooting with him and Marco Feichtner in Montafon. The day after i was in my car driving back to Austria.

In 2 weeks we only had few good weather days, the snow was good but it was really dangerous for avalanches so we hit a safty spot the first day, the next good weather day we shaped a kiker in backcountry and on Tyler’s first try half of the lending slide down but the session keep on going and they all got some tricks.

The last day was still dangerous and the guys hiked up a spot shaped a kiker and heard 2 cracks, all the area around the kiker was ready to slide down, so they decided not to hit it and was the best solution, no need to die for few shots.

This year was the second edition of the LA session in Les Arcs (france), last year unfortunatly i missed it and it was really good, a big and nice kiker with the perfect sunset view, so this year i decided to be there for sure.

Romain Grojean and Pacome Allouis are in charge of a big part of the event with the resort staff and they made a really nice event, check out the pics to see how it was.