Christian Pondella Photo Blog

Powder Magazine Photo Annual is the Holy Grail for a ski photographer to get their images published. You try all winter long to get those one or two unique images in hopes of landing one of them on the pages of the Photo Annual. It is a huge honor to see your photos in this issue as it showcases the best skiers and photographers work from the previous winter.

This recent issue I was incredibly honored to have my photography career profiled in the Photo Annual. Rob Story wrote an article about the path of my photography over the past 16 years and it was accompanied by some recent photography from the past two winters. I have been blessed with an amazing job and to be to chase my dreams. This is an incredible accolade, and thank you to Powder Magazine, my wife, family and all my friends who have been an integral part to my photography career!

SHOOTING GALLERY – Chris Davenport:  Chamonix, France

SHOOTING GALLERY – Bernard Rosow: Hole in the Wall – Mammoth, CA

Our trip to Bolivia this past spring has received a lot of positive press in the magazines. It has been featured in three different ski publications, Powder Magazine, Fall Line Skier in the UK and 4 Skiers in Italy. The cool thing about it is that Dave, Giulia and myself all got to write a feature for each publication. Below is the story and photos from each magazine.

4SKIERS

FALL LINE

POWDER MAGAZINE

This past weekend I was honored to have my work exhibited in the Vertical Mir Extreme Photo Exhibition in Moscow, Russia. I was joined by the likes fellow photographers Tero Repo, Dominique Daher, Christophe Margot, Rene Robert, Andrei Kamenev, and cinematographer Guido Perrini.This is one of the only photo exhibitions that I know of dedicated to extreme sports. A big thanks to Artem Zubkov and Vertikal Mir Magazine for organizing the exhibit. It is really amazing to see your photographs exhibited on the large format prints in a beautiful gallery in a location like Moscow.

This past week I had the opportunity to shoot with the Canadian Slopestyle Team in the Mammoth Unbound Park. With slopestyle and half pipe skiing recently added to debut in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, their has been a strong emphasis for training and developing these athletes. Most countries have assembled a team of athletes and coaches to get them ready for the Olympics. The Canadian team has some strong talent as well as the US team, so check them out this season at the Winter X Games in January.

Check out the full gallery here.

Vincent Gagnier

Phil Casabon

Ian Cosco

Vincent Gagnier

Kaya Turski

Our trip to Bolivia last May is featured in this months Powder Magazine. I am pretty excited about this as I made my literary debut as a writer and photographer. Writing the story was certainly harder then taking the photos and for sure not as much fun. It is cool to see it all come together especially after Dave Rosenbarger, Giulia Monego and myself had such an amazing trip.

So stoked to see this shot of Will Gadd in this months issue of Outside Magazine. I took this last winter when he and Tim Emmett established a new route called “Spray On” at Helmcken Falls, BC.

This past winter I had the opportunity to shoot with the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol on several occasions. It was during the month of December when we got tons of snow, so it required getting up at 4am and heading out in the early morning for there avy control. It was an incredible experience watching these guys toss dynamite and ski cut the slopes during a heavy storm cycle. In this photo Scott Donaghey lands the cover of the Patagonia Ski Patrol Catalog.

In the October issue of Powder Magazine Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol are showcased in the intro.

On newsstands in the UK, Bernard Rosow lands the cover of Fall Line Skiing. This photo was taken last December on Mammoth Mountain during one of the few sunny days when we got hammered by 18 feet of snow. Shooting in December is ideal on Mammoth Mountain because their are still more features in the terrain before most of them get buried later in the season, plus the north facing slopes get little bits of skim light making for the perfect combination of sun and shadow.

I never thought shooting men in speedos would be so cool. The Red Bull Cliff Diving series came to Boston this summer as these guys would dive 90 feet into the water. Normally an event that takes place on the sea cliffs in the Mediterranean it made its US city debut at the Institute of Contemporary Art building in Boston.

Regis College recently featured alumnus on their website in a section called “Whats Your Story”. It showcases students and what they are doing after college,  below is small recap of how my career got started.