I joined David Bonneville and Cesar Fabre for a day of shooting around Annecy, getting two spots bagged in one day.

At 10am the first filmer, Maxime Ramoul, arrives. We fill the car, pick up the second filmer and join the skiers. At eleven the spot is shaped and the skiing is about to start, and also about to end. I know what you’re thinking: something bad happened. but that wasn’t it. Cesar called it quits after crashing twice, and David nailed it twice, once to forward and once to switch. “I don’t want to stay too long on this one,” he said.

At noon we moved on for another spot. We arrived on-site but the light wasn’t good, so we moved on to some others. It’s starting to look like a real urban day, which always includes a few hours of downtime. We call up some friends who had stopped at the supermarket to buy a video game:

“Where are you guys?”
“We’re checking out a spot. Just take the road towards the snowpark.”
“Ok, we’re on our way.”

On the drive up, I’m happy to have the sun warming my neck and shining on the beautiful mountains all around. It looks more like a backcountry place – but there’s still plenty of urban potential here.

The wood wall of the chairlift station is a perfect feature, the light’s good, and though the light snow is hard to pack, we’ve got the feeling that we’re in the right place.

Cesar crash-tests again, but this time he’s the only one to master the feature, with an alley-oop 270 into the wall, while David faces a feature like this for the first time – and “face” is the right word.

At five PM we’re on our way home. David’s heels are hurt, as are Cesar’s back, but we got the shots we wanted. It’s another day in the life on the streets and in the mountains – in this case, both. And a nice kick-off to the winter season to come.