Graves Diggers: The Trevor Graves Interview
By Lee Crane

TREVOR GRAVES

AGE: 30

SIGN: I'm an Aquarius.

HOMETOWN: Salem, Oregon

YEARS SHOOTING: "I shot my first snowboard photo of Scott Clum [Stick Magazine design director] in 1985 and have been on the mission since '88."

GEAR: I shoot with Nikons. I have two F4's, N90s, and a Hasselblad for portrait and studio. I use a lot of Fuji Provia and Velvia film. B&W is done with Tri-X with a personal touch.

As a photographer, Trevor Graves has documented the lives of snowboarders both on and off the snow since his days hiking snow-filled New England gullies in 1985. He's come a long way since then. Now most of his time is spent traveling the world shooting 1996's rock star snowboard heros.

In that time Trevor has developed an understated style that captures the mood of snowboarding and hints at his own personality. Sure, he can deliver the money shots: blue sky, white snow, red jacket catalog stuff. But his most interesting work is made up of grainy black and white photos often shot during storms that make viewers feel the chill and hear the silence during a monster dump. Like few other photographers, Trevor captures real snowboarding the way we all feel it.

Trevor's work has appeared in Snowboarding, Snowboarder, Bikini, and most other magazines that run snowboard photos. Last fall Trevor helped launch the new snowboard magazine Stick, published by the creators of Raygun Magazine.

Snowboarding may be Trevor's main focus, but the outside world is seeing more of his work as well. Recently, Mindscape Inc., a CD-ROM game manufacturer used eighteen of Trevor's black and white portraits to advertise their game "Angel Devoid." The two page ad ran in Wired and other computer and gaming magazines. The game maker probably doesn't know that the portraits are of some of snowboarding's most known faces. And they probably don't care, because the images are that cool.

Before fame pulls Trevor away from our world, we wanted to talk to him about why he shoots snowboarding and what it's all about. We tracked him down in Bend, Oregon where he was on a photo shoot with 1996 Women's Overall Champion Michele Taggart. This is what he had to say:

Why do you shoot snowboarding?

Because it's the most fun thing to do. I've done a bunch of stuff and this is just the most fun. It's got a lot of valleys and peaks. You can kill it and get a fresh powder day. And other times you can go out with super good talent and it's just a sheet of ice. So you need the frustration to get the stokes. Of course you get to ride and that's the biggest thing. You can ride to the jumps and the hits. You get to ride in the helicopter. Riding is best part of shooting snowboarding.

If you had been into skateboarding heavily would you have just shot that?

I used to shoot a lot of skateboarding back on the East Coast. I actually shot that before I shot snowboarding. But I just wasn't getting published. I wasn't getting the stoke. When you don't get the props you just kind of lose interest. I still shoot a lot of skateboarding but I don't like to have it published. It just doesn't stoke me out. It's kind of my thing. My secret stash.

How did you get started in photography?

Trevor Graves couldn't go for the standard self portrait. He had to get one diving off a 500 foot brigde. Can't you just taste his fear? (Photo: Trevor Graves)

In college I took it as a course and did pretty well at it. I had an idea that shooting photos was something that I wanted to do. I knew that I didn't want a factory job. So everything I did was little steps that would help me learn. First I worked at a four-color house for print setup. It was a pretty lame job. Then the next job I took was processing film at a pro lab and I got to hang out with a lot of professional photographers and I got to process my film for free. Basically, I got money and was able to cut my expenses by processing the film for free and then getting free advice from professional shooters. Most of them were studio guys so they knew the technical things that they could help me with. And then I did that for whatever--five years. The second phase of that I worked second shift so I could snowboard during the day. I didn't have to go to work until 4:30 PM. Then I'd get up early, go shoot halfpipe at Stratton, and be back in Albany ready to work until 1:30 AM and process the film I just shot for free. Your learning curve goes up so quick because the cost of the photography goes down. Plus, I knew exactly what I did wrong and I could go fix it the next day. Hooking up with Jason Ford, Jeff Brushie and Todd Richards and those guys helped me a lot as well. I'd make them do jumps over and over because I'd miss the shot and they'd always do it.

You came up on the scene with Brush, Todd, and Jason. Did they pull you or did you boost them?

At the time it was neither. I was just lurking on the East Coast shooting for ISM [International Snowboard Magazine]. I think the essence was having Brushie win the World Championships and all of the sudden the magnifying glass was on the East Coast, and I had what everyone wanted: pictures of Jeff Brushie. I was able to crank it out real quick and other calls came as soon as Jason Ford started hitting the World Cup circuit and winning. Brushie was still a hot item and then Richards was the last guy on the first wave anyway.

When were you finally able to survive on just shooting photos?

The big change came when my wife Liz got a job in-house at Morrow. And we moved to Oregon and we stayed with Bea Morrow for six months because it was kind of hard to get going. We thought we could get a house when we moved there but we needed two years to have Liz's work credit count toward a loan. It was this weird crazy thing. We were able to save a lot of money and being on the West Coast made it easier for me to get those big scenery photos that everyone wants to look at, instead of the East Coast scrubby tree halfpipe photos that I'd been shooting.

What kind of snowboarders are your favorite to shoot?

My favorites are the super-pros. Super pros are basically people who can show up in any situation, have a good time, do the required sick tricks to make it easier for you and them. People like Todd Schlosser, Dave Lee, Tina Basich, Shannon Dunn, Triple D [Dave Downing], Jason Ford, Todd Richards, Jason Brown, Temple Cummins. There's a bunch.

What are you trying to communicate through your photos?

The best thing I can do is give the biggest compliment to the artist in the photo by showing how good a guy is riding. If I keep that in mind every time I'm shooting a photo I'll never get in trouble. If I can show how big he's going, how rad his style is, then I've done my job. This is pretty much based on my relationship with Jeff Brushie and Jason Ford in the beginning. All I did was show how good they ride. At the time I was just trying to keep up and shoot straight ski photos. They were pulling the weight. It's cool sometimes to switch it around and make the photo say more about me, but most of the time it's about the guys riding. Everybody is stoked on Jamie Lynn. They're always saying look how rad he is, they're never talking about that picture Trevor took. But that's the way it should be. Then he's the one who has to sign all those autographs.

How do you keep art and commerce balanced in your photography?

That's where the mental battle goes on all the time. If I'm being paid to do a shoot for a company, I ask them what they want and I'll discipline myself to give them the required stock photos. Once in a while someone will want me to shoot some tripped-out stuff. Then I'm like a kid in a candy store and I'm super stoked. I think everyone believes if they get the standard stuff they feel like they're doing something right. But it kind of dilutes the whole thing, too. I think if a company goes out and gets the freaky different photo, like the Oakley Campaign this year, they stand out and get noticed. Oakley went for the action shot, something we're all used to seeing, but they went at it at a different angle and it's pretty powerful. It's damn cool. But everyone always wants to be safe because they're thinking they spent all this money and they feel like they have to walk away with something. They say "do the black and white later." Okay. Then you look like everybody else and I guess that's what they want anyway.

If someone gave you the Guggenheim Snowboard Photography fellowship and fully funded you for a year what would you do?

I would want to work exclusively with a group of five or ten dudes and make it worth their while to live with me for four or five months. And go to the resorts with those four dudes and work it, and get the epic goods every where we went. Then I'd publish a coffee table book and have it lifestyle snowboarding as well as the sick action stuff. I'd pick people who have a personality that you're attracted to, that symbolize what snowboarding is about these days and not the dirty-butt, chewer, smoker guys. You know people like Dave Lee, Schlosser, Jason Ford. People who are pretty cool.

So you're into helping to build snowboard heroes?

Totally. The thing is that there are no wars now or anything and kids need heroes. Everybody wants a hero. We don't have G.I. Joe the Vietnam war hero you know, we have Jamie Lynn and Peter Line. They're the new heroes, at least to the 2 million avid snowboarders. I know that feeling because I felt it as a kid too. Tony Hawk, whoa. Chris Miller, whoa. Cabellero. I was so stoked on those guys I thought they were the shit. They may have been total assholes, but that didn't matter because I saw their pictures and they ruled. Turns out I got lucky, they were all cool guys.

If you look into your future what do you see?

I don't know. That's what's cool with Stick Magazine. Marvin [Jarret] lets me do whatever I want. Marvin doesn't care. Basically, he's the guy who runs the business and pays the printer and whatever I come up with he's pretty cool about. He's not going to fight you or anything. There are no meetings, there's no nothing. I just go, oh yeah, I'm going to do this and it's done. It's pretty basic. I kind of like being a part of the whole creative team. I can look at a whole issue rather than just one article, which is what I usually do. With Stick I get to come up with creative ideas for the whole issue and then collaborate with friends and peers and they all say let's do it and poof it's done. Then you're stoking them out. You get to see the whole product rather than just one part of it. Input on the artwork, who's getting what, and all that stuff. It kind of feels cool. The other direction I'd like to go would be bigger commercial shoots. I'm doing bigger stuff now, so are most of the guys in the industry. It's not so much for the money, but just to see if you can actually pull it off and see what all the hype is about. I'd love to do a Chevy shoot and then be able to say, yeah I did Chevy but shooting snowboarding is way more fun. That's pretty much been my realization to this point, snowboarding is way more fun.