Drive to Mammoth

A week or two ago I made my way up through the hills, deserts, and mountains to catch the Roxy Chicken Jam and Quiksilver Cluck off up in Mammoth. Everyone I talked to said the six hour drive from Southern California to Mammoth Lakes sucked, but the wide open landscapes made it pretty interesting, for me at least. When I finally made it up to Mammoth, I was greeted by my friends decked out in sombreros, ran to the mountain, grabbed my credentials for the weekend, found the biggest hot dogs I have ever seen, cooked them, and went with some friends to skate the Volcom Brother’s Skatepark that was mostly covered in snow.

Go to my Rad Collector Column for the rest of to shots.
All the landscapes were shot while driving 80mph....

Flying Hotdogs: Mascot Superpipe Comp

Personally, I think costumes can make any situation more interesting…. even halfpipe competitions where most of the riders can barely get above the lip. And on Saturday in Mammoth at the Roxy Chicken Jam, that is exactly what went down. For the past three years, as part of the Chicken Jam, Roxy has had this open competition where anyone, and I mean anyone can compete for a first place prize of $3k. It was entertaining to say the least. Since a lot of the riders were barely even airing out of the pipe I decided to take a different approach to how I shot it. Without boring you with too much detail,  I shot most of them so the snow is very over exposed, creating almost a completely white background for the costume wearing creatures to stand out against.  I wanted to do a series of shots that all looked pretty similar just showing the riders costumes… and then there are also some action shots at the end. To see the whole series check out the post on my Rad Collector Column.


I will be doing more posts from my weekend in Mammoth soon. But to check out general coverage/photo galleries. Check out the Quiksilver Blog.

King of the Park

Poster I designed for Quiksilver's King of the Park competition. The photo is mine as well. If you happen to be in Ontario any of those dates go check it out.

Todd Richards x3

As part of my job at Quiksilver I was responsible for creating the imagery in their booth for SIA. Among the things I made were these life-size cardboard cutouts of Todd Richards for people to take pictures with or whatever..... but I didn't expect them to be this big of a hit. Click on the image above to watch the video on Yobeat.

VT to CA Roadtrip

I just got back to Vermont from working at Quiksilver/Roxy for a little over 3 months in Southern California. If I wanted to have a car while I was out there I had to drive out. Sure this might sound fun, but when you have to do the drive in three days by yourself... it can be a bit crazy. On average I drove about 15 hours a day. To keep myself occupied I filmed my entire drive out there. I took the middle route so that I could hit Colorado and see some family. I finally got the chance to put together the footage of my trip.... here it is. Everything was filmed on my Canon G9. Let it load for a bit.

VT to CA Roadtrip from Laura Austin on Vimeo.

Trip Across the Country

Bright and early tomorrow morning I play on leaving Stowe, VT and starting the trek to Huntington Beach, CA to work for Quiksilver. Hopefully it will take me around 3 days to get there with a pit stop in Colorado to see some family. I plan on documenting the trip so check back for updates.