Tomorrow @the__uninvited Invitational kicks off at @woodwardparkcity and I couldn’t be more hyped to run back the A42 photo workshop with @jendephoto and @thrashley_photo .
Last year, @jess.kimura , @nirvanaortanez , and @_apgf provided us the space to gather attending media and connect as a group—something that too rarely happens during events and contests because everything is moving so fast. But connection and collaboration are so valuable as the foundation for learning, sharing, upleveling skills, and opening new avenues of creativity. And so an opportunity to do that during an event, especially The Uninvited, has so much exciting potential.
And when it comes to women’s sports and women in sports, the possibilities are even greater; just as The Uninvited has infused rocket fuel into women’s snowboarding (and snowboarding, in general), we hope to similarly enhance things for those working on the sidelines, lugging their camera bags, staring through viewfinders, and spending evenings editing in order to do justice to the riders and the riding taking place.
Last year, the week working alongside photogs with varying perspectives and at different points of their careers exceeded our hopes and expectations. Through discussion, access to ask questions, and daily photo review, the group fine-tuned photos and skills together and left with strengthened relationships in the industry. It was also just so much fun to dive deep into photography with everyone. No matter how long you’ve been shooting—there is always more to learn and perspectives and techniques to consider.
This year, the workshop is poised to be even radder thanks to the support of The Uninvited, @fattire , @coalheadwear , and @woodwardparkcity to make this happen. Can’t wait to get together with everyone and see what goes down this year!
📷 @deadleigh , @sour_beer , @emma.dubrovsky , and @walshmt
There’s something magical about trying to capture the moments of a soccer match. Summer light, attempting to anticipate what could happen, and watching closely what actually does. Recent snaps of @hearts_sc at home and away. 📷 @walshmt
The Uninvited Invitational is an unrivaled snowboarding event that brings together the best women and non-binary rail riders from all over the world for a multi-day contest fueled by a supportive, rising-tide-raises-all ethos. From the jump in 2023, @the__uninvited Invitational was immediately a must-attend week, not only for riders, but for photographers, filmers, and writers seeking to capture some of the most explosive snowboarding of the season.
We are incredibly grateful to The Uninvited crew who supported us as we held our first photographer meet-up and mini workshop during the four-day event. @jendephoto , @thrashley_photo , and @walshmt provided the foundation for connection, collaboration, and constructive feedback for a group of photographers from all over the world who were at @woodwardparkcity for the week.
Events and contests move so fast that the opportunity to gather and meet your creative peers is usually totally missed. By kicking off The Uninvited Invitational with a casual meet-up, we established a platform for connection right off the bat—because creative expression is strengthened by collaboration and feedback—and connecting is the necessary catalyst.
In the mornings, we met in the Woodward Hub before heading outside for group photo review. Stephan, Ashley, and Mary shared constructive feedback and answered questions, providing information that could be enacted in real time during the following day’s photography. This sort of peer mentorship and teamwork was so exciting, to put it lightly(!); so many times as photographers we are reliant on only our own trial and error to improve. Working in concert with varying perspectives is such an incredible tool to improve your work and we are grateful to have done so together at The Uninvited Invitational.
Thank you so much to @jess.kimura , @nirvanaortanez , @_apgf , @benbilocq and the whole Uninvited crew for giving us the space to get together. Thank you to Stephan Jende and Ashley Rosemeyer for sharing their time, experience, passion, and knowledge. Thank you to all of the photographers who hung out with us! Here are a few of the incredible images they captured!
Coffee is best served with a morning photo review ☕️📸🗒️ Day 2 of @the__uninvited kicked off with helpful tips, group inspiration, and celebrating our work from Day 1. We’re so glad to have the rare opportunity to review our collective shots in real time! Cheers to another great day at @woodwardparkcity !
We’re excited to bring so many talented photographers together at @the__uninvited ! Yesterday all the photographers got together to meet and connect in order to work collaboratively over the course of the next four days. The Uninvited is such a great opportunity to make connections and learn from one another but it’s vital to open the conversation at the beginning, otherwise you blink and the event is wrapped! Sometimes all it takes is linking up to learn something new, no matter how long or short you’ve been behind the lens.
Thanks for sharing your pro tips this week @thrashley_photo@jendephoto@walshmt@mia_danielle . 📸🫂
Stay tuned for more updates from this great media crew as we collaborate and workshop while photographing The Uninvited Invitational at @woodwardparkcity !
Giveaway: Win a pair of lift tickets to join @the__uninvited and @btbounds Ride Day at @woodwardparkcity ! Details below.
On Saturday, April 12th, @the__uninvited Invitational finals go down at @woodwardparkcity and on Sunday, April 13th, join @the__uninvited and @btbounds for a community ride day (and a bunch of awesome community groups and organizations for the community pop-up that morning).
We’re giving away a pair of @woodwardparkcity lift tickets to join the ride day on April 13th, courtesy of @subaru_usa ! To enter to win, answer the question below in the comments and tag a friend:
Magazines, books, photos, and videos are purveyors of snowboard culture and a sense of community lives in their pages and on their timelines. What is something you have read, watched, or saw that has made you feel a sense of community? Often the magic of mags and movies is that this is aspirational, a spark to be a part of something.
(This is a fairly nerdy question, but the role of words, photos, and videos is something special when it comes to connecting community.)
This giveaway is open through Wednesday, April 9th!
Next weekend! 72 of the world’s best snowboarders will descend on @woodwardparkcity for 2025 @the__uninvited Invitational! Two days of qualifying kick off the event with finals on Saturday, April 12th (open and free to spectators), during which the riders will be competing for $60,000 in prize money. Legends, pros, and up-and-coming women snowboarders will all be together for The Uninvited Invitational—it’s one of the most incredible and special events in women’s sports!
It’s also a huge event for women photographers and filmers. We are ecstatic to be working with The Uninvited and photographers @jendephoto and @thrashley_photo host a mentorship meet up to connect the photography community in attendance. We’ll share more after the event!
And, on Sunday, April 13th, we are excited to be a part of The Uninvited x @btbounds Ride Day Community Pop-Up, an indoor meet-and-greet mini fair featuring nine groups and organizations impacting the mountain community and beyond. Come say hi, make some poetry with us, and ride! (Sign up at .)
We can’t wait for The Uninvited, a launchpad for women in sports in all ways!
The week before last I pulled a familiar, handmade book from my dad’s bookshelf. I remember it from my childhood, filling its pages with drawings with my dad, but when I flipped through the book this time, in addition to news clippings, mail correspondence, and journal entries by my parents, I found poems my dad wrote that I had never read before.
As I sat at my father’s kitchen table, the spring night falling outside the windows, it was emotional reading his words, and then the second stanza of this poem made me feel hope.
There, where the sand
Cups the ocean,
Let us swallow
The sky, swim
The tide,
Gather the sun.
My dad wrote it while we were visiting Montserrat, and I can vividly picture the black sand beach he was likely describing. But there is something about these lines. Something that feels bigger than me sitting here, reading my father’s writing and missing him so deeply. There’s a magic in his words, filled with love. And for the first time, I felt hope.
The experience of grief, for me, has not been rife with hope. It’s hard to feel hopeful when you’re just trying to exist each day. Hope feels like a luxury that you’re not privy to yet in the early months of grief. You trade in despair and grit and pain and confusion—and love. Lots of love. Even when there have been bits of joy and comfort amidst the pain—and these are the bits you need to keep going—hope has generally seemed like something far off in the distance that I *hope* to feel someday in the future.
My dad passed away ten months ago and finding this poem made me feel hope. That the world is bigger than I feel. That love doesn’t go away ever. That the energy continues. That there is connection and wonder and meaning in being swallowed up by the beauty of existing. Of the beach. Of the sea. Of the sky. That my dad felt this, when he read, when he wrote, and it brought him solace. And finding it, it did for me too.
Each day, I endeavor to find harmony with my grief. It is a hard, slow process, filled with love and heartache. Everyone’s experience is different, of course, but what seems to be universal is the need to find that harmony that will carry on forever. (Cont in comments)
We’re excited for @eaststreetarchives Homesick this weekend, March 21-23 at @strattonresort ! Homesick is a celebration of snowboarding’s past, present, and future, and incredible non-profits @shredfndn , @chillfoundation , and @b4bc will be on site, too. Homesick brings together sport and culture and since the event’s inception three years ago, it has been an opportunity for emerging photographers and videographers to connect with industry veterans—and to capture the snowboarding of legends! The blending of all of the individuals who make snowboarding such a robust community is what makes Homesick so special, and we’re so excited to be there this year!
Come say hi and check out A42 in the Homesick registration room throughout the weekend! We’ll be up at the Ross Powers Retro Halfpipe competition on Saturday, too!
February 19th is a Day of Remembrance that commemorates the 1942 signing of Executive Order 9066 by FDR and the impact that this unfathomable act has had on individuals, families, the Japanese-American community, and America since that day. The order allowed the US Military to forcibly remove civilians from their homes by establishing military zones in California, Oregon, and Washington. More than 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry (Issei, Japanese immigrants, and Nisei, first generation American citizens of Japanese ancestry) were forcibly removed (their assets often seized or taken) and incarcerated across ten incarceration camps located in desolate areas with inhospitable conditions throughout the West. The last of the camps did not close until 1946.
Heart Mountain in Park County, Wyoming was the fourth largest incarceration camp during World War II. At the camp’s peak, on January 1, 1943, 10,767 people were confined there, making Heart Mountain the third largest city in Wyoming.
Today, the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center—a world-class museum that was founded in 2011—tells the story of the people who were incarcerated at the site, their life at the camp, and how they persevered throughout it all. At Heart Mountain, the families created a robust farming enterprise (that sent food to other areas of the state), set up school for the children, and throughout such a dire time, made beautiful art that is displayed throughout the museum. Men from Heart Mountain (and other incarceration camps) would enlist in the US military, fighting for the country that had imprisoned them and their families. The perseverance through the hate, racism, and incarceration at the camps is beyond words and the Interpretive Center does an incredible job of honoring, educating, and reflecting on this experience.
We are grateful that creative expression is a flame that is impossible to extinguish. We are reminded of the power of words, art, photos, and film to share perspective, honor experience, spread love and kindness, and affect the world in a positive way. In the comments, a few books, films, and a podcast to learn more about the Japanese American experience in WWII.
We’re a little late on the January read, so we’re going to drop two BOTMs in February and we’re still going to refer to this first one as the January book because what is the joy of reading if you have to follow rules? Enjoy. :)
“But the lesson and practice of running is, again, a faith in the possibility of positive change. That, if you run enough miles, with enough dedication and the right kind of mindset, if you accept the limitations of what’s possible but refuse to accept the rutted path of what’s painless, if you keep at it, if you keep going, you can become what it was you were meant to be.”
Peter Sagal is best known as the host of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, but he is also a runner. In his 2018 memoir, The Incomplete Book of Running, Sagal combines humor, insight, and reflection as he details the ways in which running has been a companion, refuge, and motivator throughout the ups and down of his life. From runs around his neighborhood to leading a blind runner during the 2013 Boston Marathon (and many subsequent races), Sagal blends his wit an pensive observation about running and life together in a meaningful and entertaining way. The constant punishment/reward of running described by Sagal is familiar to anyone who laces up their shoes regularly (and an easy parallel for the tribulations and accomplishments of life), but Sagal has a deft ability to make the endless trudge of putting one foot in front of the other enticing and relatable, even for folks who don’t call themselves runners…yet.
Writing can take you magical places. These photos are from the first week of January around Cody, Wyoming while on a writer’s media trip to stack story ideas and photos for pitches and publication. These views were just from the road! Big thanks to Mesereau PR and the Cody Yellowstone Tourism Board for introducing us to such a beautiful area. The combination of all levels and all kinds of outdoor activity, access to Yellowstone through the east side (in winter, wow!), and deep history and reflection through area Smithsonian museums is truly unique. More to come from this trip.
