TOP TO BOTTOM Conor Donovan is from the north shore of Oahu, HI. He works at Turtle Bay Resort as a server. When he’s not serving, he’s trying to get barreled. He was in Tahiti for that reason. This was the first shot I took from the water at Teahupo’o and afterwards, I got taken over the falls and hit the reef. This shot was why I came to Tahiti, though— to challenge myself and try to get a shot like this. When I hit the button, I knew this was it. Laura Coviella is a pro surfer from the Canary Islands. I reached out to her because she’s a Red Bull athlete and she became my muse while I was in Tahiti. This moment is right after she rode out of her first big barrel of the trip—that feeling of survival at Teahupo’o. Words Colin Wiseman Photos and Captions Tyler Ravelle T yler Ravelle has a formula, but that’s not to say his imagery is formulaic. “For every paying shoot, I do two personal projects,” the pho-tographer says. It’s late September and he’s practically dripping wet, just off the plane from Teahupo’o, Tahiti, where he learned to swim with a wide-angle lens at what is widely considered the world’s heaviest wave. It was a self-funded trip halfway around the world. “I don’t ever want to be geographically based, like ‘Tyler is a Whistler photographer,’ even though that’s where I live,” Tyler says. “I love the fact that I can travel with my camera and that I can create relationships all over the world. I had a last-minute flight to Teahupo’o with no real plan. I just knew there was a big swell coming. I got there and met a Red Bull surfer from the Ca-nary Islands, then I met this dude from California, and everyone was just ripping. As a creative, there’s this gift where you can make friends anywhere you go because everyone wants photos of them-selves. Tahiti was purely for the sake of pushing my limits. When you shoot for passion, when you shoot for the fun of it, you al-ways end up getting more of the work you want anyways. People see you investing in yourself and what you want to shoot, and that feeds into getting more of the work that you want to get.” Snow, surf, skate and moto, he shoots it all in the action sports realm, and he loves it. Staying true to his vision and constantly expanding his subject matter are the products of this passion-first approach which leads him around the world. He begins each project with an open mind and an open heart, and often finds immediate connection with his subjects as a result. Make space to thrive creatively and make new connections—that’s Tyler’s secret to success. And how does he define success? “I love learning about shooting in new places and new light and new tech-niques and new equipment, even though it’s something that seems so simple,” Tyler says. “You have your ISO, your f-stop and your shutter speed, but you can get so technical within those three aspects. Then you intro-duce flashes and water housings and different lighting techniques and scenarios and it’s something you can continue to push for the rest of your life. That’s what I’m really excited about. There’s no lim-it. And that’s what continues to bring me back to how grateful I am for this job because it really feels like there’s no end goal. You can just keep learning and keep pushing and that’s what really motivates me.” Tyler got his start with snowboarding, and it remains his North Star. He was born in British Columbia, moved across Canada to Ontario for high school, then flew back west as soon as he gradu-ated. Trying to make it as an athlete helped him learn the intri-cacies of content creation. “I was always a little bit ahead of that curve where I realized I wasn’t doing the craziest tricks, but I could create value for myself as an athlete by having my own photog-raphy equipment and filming equipment and learn how to shoot and edit,” he says. “I was able to deliver from the age of 18.” Still, Tyler made ends meet by working blue collar Canadian seasonal jobs—construction here, oil work in Alberta there. Meanwhile, he took online marketing courses and relentlessly pursued lenswork. He heard “No” a lot, but that didn’t slow him down. “I started building pitch decks and just sending email after email after email to the point where there was one month where I had my truck payments and rent was due and I could only choose one or the other,” he remembers. “I got one break from this company in Australia that made phone cases to mount to your dirt bike. They gave me a three-month retainer for $10,000. From then, it was on.” 082 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 21.3: Page 82
