This year we wound up having some amazing weather which didn’t provide us with the amazing frost covered landscapes like we’d been treated to in the past couple of years, but it did make for much warmer shooting conditions. We started bright and early photographing all the preparations at the start line out at the Ukrainian Cultural Village. The 55km and 31km races both left from here and worked their way back to the Waskehegan Staging area located at North Cooking Lake. After photographing the start of both races, we hoped in our vehicles and drove back to the finish line to cover the start of the shorter races. After briefly getting stuck in the parking lot (thank you random volunteers for your help pushing us out) we spread out to cover the start of the shorter races and photograph the first racers to cross the finish line. With the warmer weather and great ski conditions, attendance at this year’s event was up and it was so nice to see so many families out enjoying the beautiful weather and getting some exercise. This year I experimented with shooting video to expand our coverage and assemble a fusion video.

Below is the slideshow and a few still images from this year’s event.

For official race results and more information on the Canadian Birkebeiner Ski Festival, be sure to visit their website and hopefully we’ll be taking your photograph at next years event!

It was a mixed bag of weather ranging from overcast and snowing to windy and warm but overall the conditions were excellent for skiing and for photography. I decided to rent a 300mm f2.8 lens from Lens Lenders and this was a great opportunity to try out this beast of a lens to see if it would be one I’d like to add to the lens collection one day. I hand-held the lens for about 6 hours and my arms and shoulders felt it on Sunday but the overall image quality of this piece of glass made up for the pain. It is a very fast lens and extremely sharp. Being outdoors with decent lighting I didn’t really have need for the IS but there were a few instances where it definitely helped, particularly considering I was working with it hand-held. For my fellow Canadian photographers, if you are looking for a great place to rent glass, be sure to contact Todd at Lens Lenders.

This year, four of us including myself, provided coverage of the event. Special thanks to Owen Law, Stephanie Wachnuk-Dowber, and Paul Kruger for their help with this event.

Here are a few of my favourites from the event: