Skiing at Dusk at Brighton, Utah

I was just enjoying the hang time, recalls skier Dash Longe of this moment launching off a 45-foot cliff at dusk in Brighton Ski Resort, Utah.  This was the first time Longe had skied off this particular cliff, but he had hucked others in the area.  Brighton has a wide variety of cliff bands that are easy to access and see relatively low traffic compared with most ski resorts.  Fresh, cold Utah powder would make his landing soft—if only he could see it.

I couldn't see the landing, but it was not too worrisome actually—I was able to visualize the whole thing and was quite confident I could make it, says Longe, who lives in Salt Lake City and has been skiing for 26 years.

Getting the Shot

Photographer Scott Markewitz headed to Brighton with the intention of capturing this exact shot.  I was looking for a big cliff to shoot at dusk, and this one at Brighton is great to shoot and easily accessible.

To get his shot, Markewitz trekked up and down from the cliff multiple times to calibrate his photo and get the frame just right.  The biggest technical challenge was setting up the strobes and calibrating everything before it got too dark to get the evening sky, he says.  With one strobe positioned at the top of the cliff and another stand holding two strobes at the base of the jump, the photographer was ready.  We got this shot in one take, Markewitz recalls.

It was pretty ballsy for Dash to jump off a cliff that big when he could barely see the landing and then get blasted with the strobes, which basically blinded him before he landed, the photographer adds.

Markewitz photographed with a Nikon D3, a 17-35mm lens, two Broncolor Mobil2 power packs set up with three heads on stands, and pocket Wizard radio transmitters to fire everything.  Select the photo for the large version.