Echo BASE

Headed out to Echo, UT Sunday afternoon to shoot Clayton Butler, Kevin Chirico and Marshall Miller hucking their carcasses off a couple of 500 foot cliffs.  Having never seen BASE jumping in person and having never been to these cliffs before it was going to be a day of learning for me.  I knew that in order to really get a feel for the dynamics of the jumps I’d have to shoot it wide angle.  I also knew that the images would be less compelling but it was the best way to get a record of the trajectories, speed and scale of the place for future shoots.

Kevin sent a normal BASE jump off the stunning red rock wall and was followed off an opposing cliff by Marshall and then Clayton who added skis and a whole lotta speed to the mix. Marshall tossed a massive front flip that sucked the buffer on my camera dry before the chute deployed killing what was a pretty slick sequence shot. Then Clayton gave everyone a scare when his lines twisted after his chute deployed nearly sucking him back into the cliff face and then into the scrub on the talus slope below.  Somehow he managed to wrestle the rig to the ground safely.  Adding insult to near injury the images are completely out of focus.  I mean total crap.  I suck.  Argh…not sure how I can blame the athlete for this but I’m working on it.

Kevin Chirico BASE

Marshall Miller Ski BASE front flip (ran out of buffer @ 10 fps)

Stoked to get back out there and shoot this again.  Learned a great deal about what will and won’t work up there and have some really fun ideas for the future.  Hopefully we’ll be getting after this again soon.