From Red Rocks to White Peaks: Chasing Light through a Storm

I’m writing this piece today about a photo shoot that happened nearly a year ago, but for a handful of reasons, it never got the moment it deserved.

It was the Profoto campaign for the Pro-B3, a project built around ruggedness, freedom, and the kind of strobes you can throw over your shoulder and take anywhere. Truthfully, it meant a lot to me before we ever set foot on location. The team at Profoto gave me rare creative latitude: I could choose the subject and the location, and build the campaign in the forest surrounding my home. I would be able to take my kid to school and drive a couple minutes to the shoot… or so I thought.

The day before the shoot, I was in Phoenix giving a keynote. I left directly from the talk and drove home because Profoto’s marketing directors were flying into Flagstaff for dinner the night before we went to set. Mid-drive, my producer in Southern California called: he’d contracted COVID and wouldn’t be able to make the production.

Normally, that would have been a panic-button moment. But every once in a while, you hit a point in this career where you realize you can either cling to the plan, or accept that the plan is already gone. Instead of making frantic calls from the road, I put on some calming music and started rebuilding the shoot in my head, visualizing what it would look like without my producer.

A couple hours later, I was home and meeting with the crew who’d be with me the next day. We talked gear, approach, and the overall feeling: I wanted a subject that could bring motion and form into the woods of Northern Arizona, a mountain biker whose movement could feel almost sculptural against the environment.

The other critical element was the equipment itself. All of the heads we’d be using were prototypes. Fortunately, we had technical support on standby from Sweden throughout the shoot. That was exciting in a different way, we weren’t just using the gear, we were actively helping stress-test and shape the strobes we were building the campaign around.

That night, I took the Profoto team out for dinner and wine. It was one of those evenings that reminds you why you do this, great stories, a lot of laughter, genuine excitement for the next day’s work. We didn’t know it then, but the shoot was already changing.

We were sitting next to a large window in a quiet restaurant in downtown Flagstaff when we noticed snowflakes starting to fall. It felt cozy. Harmless. But on the drive home, the snow kept coming, and it wasn’t easing up.

The next morning, I woke early, made an espresso, and looked outside. Flagstaff had been hammered overnight. Six to seven inches of snow covered everything, and the roads north of town were closed. Even if we wanted to push ahead with the forest shoot we’d planned, we simply couldn’t get there.

So the frantic calls began.

Without a producer, the simplest solution was for me to take the lead and pivot the production, but pivot to where?

I ran through my mental catalog of locations I’ve photographed over the years and landed on the most obvious answer: head south to Sedona. It’s only about 45 minutes from my house, but the elevation change is dramatic, and with it, the weather. Sedona hadn’t seen snow, and the forecast hinted at light clouds with a chance for clearer skies later in the day.

We chose a somewhat centrally located spot in the heart of the town, and the team, the biker, and the client all met there. Suddenly we were building a new campaign, one decision at a time, in real time.

Within the first stretch of shooting, it became clear we needed to be deeper in the landscape. Between setups I called a local tour company and rented off-road vehicles with drivers so we could take the entire crew, and the gear, into the red rock backcountry.

It ended up being one of those special days where everything stays fluid. Because the tour was private, we could ask the driver to stop whenever a view grabbed us. We’d hop out, build a setup fast, make the frames, break down, and move again. We did that for three hours and walked away with ten key images in camera. The work felt so seamless that, strangely, many of us were grateful for what the storm had forced us into.

By the next morning, the roads had cleared back in Flagstaff. The storm’s heavy snow had turned into fresh powder, an entirely new story for mountain biking. One where the rider carves through winter, kicking up snow and leaves in his wake. Yellow aspens were still holding on to the season, and the light, what the campaign was really about, showed up in full.

The contrast was almost absurd: near-desert red rock one day, deep winter the next.

For the final image, we wanted a frame that hinted at the shift we’d witnessed across those 24 hours, an image of changing seasons more than a single location. I asked one of my assistants to gather as many fallen leaves as he could find. Then, because direction in a photograph is conveyed more by the subject than the atmosphere, I had him throw the leaves in front of the camera at the same moment the biker rode through the frame away from me.

With the lighting kept consistent on both the rider and the leaves, the viewer would never know the leaves were actually traveling toward the biker, not away from his tires. It’s a simple trick I learned years ago, and it was exactly right for this piece. The image below is a single capture, nearly out of camera (aside from minor cleanup and reducing how much mud he had on his pants).

This shoot stayed with me for a long time, and I’ve wanted to talk about it properly. However, days after we wrapped, once everyone had flown home, my family realized that the incredible journey of our German Shepherd, Teddy, was coming to an end. 

I want to take a moment to thank the team at Profoto, because when I shared what was happening, they immediately put everything on pause so I could be with my pup and family to create some final special memories before saying goodbye.

In many ways, this campaign celebrates creativity, flexibility, problem-solving, and the beauty of light. But for me, it also holds a very personal memory: a time of real joy, surrounded by great people, and some of the last meaningful moments with an incredible dog.

This one’s for you, Teddy.