Danny Davis snowboarding Those Days Dean Blotto Gray

The hip jump is one of the more under-used features in snowboarding, due to the difficulty in construction and the daily maintenance required to keep a good line in, and a properly pitched landing day after day. You can find a hip in various snowboard parks around the world, and when you do, it’s certainly part of “the line.” There is way too much fun to be had.

When hip jumps are constructed for video shoot purposes, the amp meter starts to rise in anticipation for what will be massive airtime, along with a nervousness through knowing that reaching these heights means margin of error is at a minimum when thinking about landing in the sweet spot. As a photographer at a hip session, I’m possibly as amped and nervous as the riders. They are not only some of the biggest airs of the season, but possibly some of the biggest slams as well.

With that said, a well built hip provides the safest possible scenario for a snowboarder to fly down the hill, keep the board in line with the track, execute maneuver and land lightly on the steep wall just to the right (or left). These are the times looking through the viewfinder that make photography so dang fun, capturing a unique moment of accomplishment and exhilaration on snowboarding’s hip jump.

Danny Davis while filming for Burton’s film, Standing Sideways, at Mammoth Mountain, California.

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This month, Burton’s principal photographer, Dean Blotto Gray gives us a glimpse into archive of his illustrious career. Blotto’s eye has produced some of the most iconic images of this generation, with riders including Jussi Oksanen, Mikey Rencz, Mark McMorris, Zak Hale, Gigi Rüf, Jeremy Jones, Danny Davis, Roope Tonteri, and countless more. He is one of our favorite photographers, and we are proud to feature him in our inaugural story for the Those Days series.

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Those Days is a new, weekly series from Snowboard Mag that gives photographers a platform to share some of the most memorable moments from their careers. Each month, we give a different photographer the platform to share photos that spur feelings of nostalgia, triumph, pain; anything with a story they want to tell. Our culture’s history is vast and full of these special, fleeting moments in time. Those Days is here to bring them to you.