3 minute read
ALL THE WILD WORLD
PIERCE KLINKE
Idaho's Adventure Photographers
BY HEATHER HAMILTON-POST
The joy of spring is perhaps lost on Skagway, Alaska. “Those are some pretty brutal conditions to be operating in,” laughed Pierce Klinke, an adventure athlete, cinematographer, and photographer who spent some time there shooting heli-skiing.
“It was negative 15 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill that made it feel like negative 40. My batteries had died halfway through the day because of the cold. I had frostbite in my fingers,” he said.
Klinke got a taste for this particular kind of brutality at age 13, when he wanted to capture the backpacking and climbing trips he and his brother were embarking upon in Washington. “From there, it turned into a full-fledged career after I decided halfway through college that I didn’t want to study mechanical engineering,” he said.
On the slopes or balanced precariously over a canyon, Klinke says that no two projects are the same, and while it presents some challenges, the chance to travel, work, and meet new people is something he’s grateful for, even when things go wrong.
“There are so many factors in play out there that are out of your control. So you just have to be able to roll with the punches—bringing a good attitude certainly helps with that. It’s way more fun to work with people when everyone is just stoked and happy to be out there,” he said.
For photographer John Webster, the draw happened during his teenage years. When he got into snowboarding, he started noticing the action shots. “I love the variety of sports you can shoot that are intense, as well as the environments that are always changing; rivers could be very high, powder days could be all time, or simply a moody portrait of an athlete could make a day outing worth it. The variety is endless,” he said.
Webster’s work in adventure photography, commercial, and short film has taken him all over the world, including Northern Patagonia’s Futaleufu River, on the border of Chile and Argentina, which sits in a corridor surrounded by the Andes. “The river can be aqua blue, warm, and comes equipped with some very large rapids. The weather is ever changing it seems, it could rain for days on end or be the prettiest bluebird day. There’s nothing quite like it,” Webster said.
