By Dominic Ebenbichler

The tragedy of Dutch Prince Johan Friso, who was buried in an avalanche while skiing in Austria last February and who has since been in a coma, generated the idea to shoot a story about freeride skiing and how ski professionals are trying to minimize any possible risks.

I’m lucky to have easy access to some of the best European freeride skiers as they are either part of my family or good friends with whom I go skiing with. I asked one of my cousins, Christoph Ebenbichler, who is a professional skier, if he would like to be part of this story. We discussed the riders who we wanted to work with on the story and the basic topics we wanted to cover, and decided to focus on showing the beauty of skiing in the back country combined with showing the professional approach everybody should have when skiing off piste. I contacted the skiers and they were all happy to work with me on the project.

Shooting freeride skiing requires a lot of preparation, organization and flexibility, especially in terms of getting up really early. We had to decide what time, which day and where we would go and of course we had to check the snow conditions and look at all possible avalanche risk reports.

Risk management is a term that becomes very familiar when going to ski or to shoot with these professionals. Although what they are doing seems quite insane at some points, they are always aware of any possible risks. I remember a sentence my cousin Christoph once said to me, “You never can be 100% sure that there won’t be an avalanche, but you have to reach at least 95%, otherwise you are dead”. And being dead is definitely not an option.

Initially, I was lucky and had a couple of great days shooting at Sonnenkopf mountain. Then, unfortunately, during December the weather in Austria changed completely. Unusually high temperatures and lots of rain made it impossible to continue with the story. The day before New Year’s Eve conditions changed again so Christoph and I decided to give it a go and went to Seegrube mountain which is part of the famous Nordkette mountains.

The Nordkette mountains are located just on the north side of Innsbruck. They are typically extremely steep and therefore something of a Mecca for freeride skiers. From up there we had an amazing view above the city of Innsbruck and we managed to get some great action pictures. However, we had to quit at noon because of the increase in risk from avalanches due to the warm temperatures and sunshine.

I was happy to have shot a lot of images in December, but I was still missing pictures of female freeride skiers. So I called Karin Huttary, a former skiercross world champion and Christiane Bauer, a former alpine skiing world cup racer, and asked if they wanted to be part of my story. Luckily for me, as I know that you can’t get better professional skiers than these two women, they said yes.

Our efforts were made difficult though as good snow at the beginning of January this year was rare, so we had to go high. Really high! So we headed to the biggest Austrian glacier in Stubai and another professional skier Patrick Koller, who was part of the Austrian Olympic team in 2012, joined us. The conditions were incredibly tough. The snow was totally wind packed and we had a high alert for avalanches on the day. We had to be extremely careful to find some safe spots to shoot.

It’s also important to remember that freeride skiing is not just going up with a chairlift or a gondola and then skiing down again. This kind of skiing requires more leg work. To show this we had to go back and shoot on Nordkette mountains again. You can go up with the gondola, but in order to reach the secret spots you have to climb and hike.

Karin Huttary and Swedish pro Jon Örarbäck came with me. They are totally familiar with this mountain and they know every single rock on it. It was a pleasure to ski with them and shoot some pictures with the beautiful Innsbruck scenery in the background.

Even so when we checked the avalanche risk reports again, as these mountains are very well known for big avalanches, we decided to be cautious and not to ski down the better run. Simply because we all thought we are not more than 95% sure that there won’t be an avalanche.

Freeride skiing is cool. But it is only cool if you manage to stay alive.

By Dominic Ebenbichler

Tourists or foreigners have to look twice when attending a Perchten festival in the western Austrian region of Tyrol. Some probably think there is something wrong with the countryfolk – dressing up like demons, wearing head to toe animal skins and wooden masks, behavior that could easily be associated with some kind of a devil’s cult. It just doesn’t seem to be normal.

The explanation goes back to the years about 500 AD. Back then farmers performed pagan rites to disperse the ghosts of winter to help bring a fruitful harvest. They thought it might work with terrifying masks which should scare even ghosts. And what is more scarier than the devil himself? Right, nothing! Even ghosts have to be scared by the devil.

In 2012 not much has changed. Of course we know that scaring ghosts is not going to work, but traditions are deep-rooted and somehow people still believe in the power of pagan rituals. And in the countryside there is nothing more important than a good harvest, so why not help a good harvest along by getting rid of some winter ghosts one way or another. Old habits die hard I guess.

I come from the countryside and still live there, but never was very interested in those kind of traditions (maybe because my family are not farmers). Of course I knew about Perchten and things like that, but I was never about to perform in any kind of festival. I was however very interested to find out why people are still dressing-up like the devil and running through the streets, trying to scare adults and little children. I knew that the festivals would produce atmospheric pictures, but I also wanted to look behind the curtain to see if those people involved are still really normal men and women just like you and me. Thus I thought it would be best to follow the production of the costumes, masks and preparations for a festival.

It wasn’t that easy to find a tannery producing the special costumes. But eventually I found one in Scheffau, Tyrol. The boss of the tannery is a women named Barbara Trenkwalder and she told me that they exclusively produce the costumes by hand out of sheep and goat coats. They need 11- 14 sheep for one costume, which seemed to be a lot to me. Three dressmakers need to work one full day to make one costume. Of course, the tannery produces some other products as well, but in the months of September to November the dressmakers almost solely work on the costumes.

Barbara also introduced me to Markus Spiegel, a woodcarver in Paffenhofen, Tyrol. His workshop, which is located in the basement of his house in Pfaffenhofen, was full of finished masks, all looking very meanly at me. He showed me the whole production, starting with a 30x50cm wood stump. Cutting the stump with his power saw and seeing all those gruesome looking masks hanging on the wall reminded me a little bit of a Freddy Kruger movie. After cutting the stump into something which looked like the shape of a head, Markus started to show me the next working steps, the finest and most delicate art of woodcarving I would say. The production of one mask takes almost 15 hours and Markus’ waiting list for a mask is therefore more than one year!

Markus invited me to join his “Pfaffenhofener Tuifl” crew to go to a Perchten festival in Heiterwang, Tyrol. As I wanted to photograph a festival anyway, I thought it might be a very nice opportunity to shoot the people dressing themselves up. And indeed it was.

During this festival more than 500 little (even children ran through the streets) and big devil’s donned their unique costumes and individually crafted masks and tried to scare the gathered spectators. People were screaming and smiling at the same time. The show the masqueraders put on was very impressive. Fire, fog and pyrotechnics made it all even more spectacular.

I now totally understand if people and children are a little scared by just looking at demons and devils… I was too!

Growing up in the western Austrian province of Tyrol, you learn to ski very early in life. I actually started to ski when I was one and a half years old, which was almost as early as when I learned to walk. Every single kid in our country dreams of being a famous ski racer and therefore all kids are competing in kid races during the winter. I was no exception there, thus it isn’t astonishing that I now like to shoot World Cup ski races. The very first race of the season every year in Soelden is always a very nice shooting experience.

We used to cover this event with two photographers, but this year it was a little bit different as we decided to try cover it with only one photographer — me. We also decided to try to introduce a fresh, newer style to shooting these races. Most photographers were focusing on sharp, tight action shots, the style of the last decade of shooting ski races. Every single racer produces the same picture actually.

I think this approach is kind of old school and needs a little refreshment. Before I headed to Soelden, I talked to my chief-photographer Leo Foeger if he also thought that we needed to change our style of ski photography and he gave me the official “go” to try it this weekend.

The first day women’s race was on schedule and the weather didn’t seem too good, but the weather-forecasts were wrong. It wasn’t sunny, but a combination of clouds and fog which gave a nice mountain view and produced some really nice pictures. As I was able to put a remote on a fence, I could also shoot the normal, but boring, action shots.

The men’s race started with heavy snowfall and absolutely no visibility with temperatures around -15 degrees Celsius. I expected the race to be postponed or even to be cancelled. But as weather changes in seconds in regions above 3000m in altitude, it cleared up and the sun began to shine after racer number five passed my position.

As I was not very happy with my pictures of the first racer (in fact they were…), I decided to change my plan and leave the normal action shots to all my other colleagues so I could try to shoot some nice pictures again. As I was shooting up there, I realized that I am very privileged to have this job and even to live in this area. A beautiful mountain view, sunshine and perfect snow conditions made me want to go skiing myself. I tried to take a variety of different shots and changed my position after almost every racer. As I scrolled through my pictures on the camera screen, I realized that I had shot the leading five racers from five different angles, which I really liked.

Five years ago, I wouldn’t have dared to come down to the press center without a normal tight action shot of the winner. However, I think that if you try to make a nice feature picture, you still need to have the winner in the picture. Otherwise it is useless for the clients.

Hopefully our clients will like this attempt at a “new” style of photography.