It’s similar to when I see an athlete when they’re 15 or 16 you can see their potential.” “It was pretty obvious that he had a good eye for it. “I had him come to X Games for his first tryout,” says Under Armour Team Manager Scott Hibbert.
“I asked, ‘Will you guys fulfill my contract if I shoot video?’” In 2009, he signed a contract with Under Armour, then promptly blew his ACL. Mike Douglas took him to New Zealand to shoot an episode of Salomon Freeski TV. Jiberish, who signed him as an athlete when he won Superunknown, hired him to shoot their lookbooks. The same thing happened with his sponsors: When Clarke got sidelined by injuries-Berman calls one season a comedy of errors-he filled in as a shooter. Level 1 founder Josh Berman, who knew he was majoring in film, started to let him edit bonus features. He had filmed with Level 1 for a few seasons, scoring segments in Turbo, Realtime, and Long Story Short. “I was one of the first people to do a double in a slope contest, but then I broke my back in a Batman costume.” “It took away some of my desire to really progress,” he says.
He was lying on his cracked spine, strapped to a stretcher, when he began to realize he wasn’t going to be a pro skier forever. PHOTO: Jay MichelfelderĮarly on an April morning in 2008 at the now-defunct and somewhat satirical Orage Masters in Whistler, wearing tights and a cape, Clarke overshot the landing of a jump. No longer on the fence, Clarke has committed fully to a life behind the lens. And then he started standing on podiums, like at the 2008 U.S. Soon enough, the East Coaster moved west to attend film school at C.U. In 2006, his senior year, he beat out Ahmet Dadali and Mike Riddle to win Level 1’s Superunknown contest. “In high school he made ‘Me Gusta,’ which is still one of the best edits I’ve seen,” says Waterville coach Dan Shuffleton. Like any YouTube-raised kid, he made movies of his high school friends skiing, but his were polished. He spent two years at New Hampshire’s Waterville Valley Academy at the same time as Colby West, Dylan Ferguson, and L.J. He caught Peter Olenick’s eye at Whistler’s High North Ski Camp and made the Salomon Freeski Team when he was 15.
But he’s pulling away from the ski world that shaped him, and that development is beginning to make a serious mark.ĬLARKE, who grew up down the street from Lake Placid, New York’s Winter Olympic Training Center’s water ramps, advanced easily through the ranks of professional skiing. He says that skiing got him where he is, and that he wouldn’t care about filmmaking if it wasn’t for ski movies. Today, the New York native shoots Tom Brady commercials, has gigs with Neiman Marcus, FedEx and Best Buy, and calls Manhattan home. Unlike Mike Douglas or Clarke’s high school classmate Nick Martini, who both ski and act as cinematographers professionally, he’s broken out entirely of the professional ski world. At 23, he’s making it as a cinematographer in a way that few skiers have. But now, he spends more time in front of his computer editing video than he does on skis. He threw the first dub cork 12 tail in competition at the Nippon Open and got nods on Newschoolers for his ability to stomp anything smoothly. For five years, he was the one being followed with the camera pointed at him. With a battery pack strapped to his back, a huge stabilizing bar curved over his head, and a camera out in front of him, he trails athletes, aiming to get the shot. WHEN MICHAEL CLARKE skis, he looks like a Ghostbuster. This story originally appeared in the January 2013 (Volume 41, Issue 5) issue of POWDER. Baker gets a ton of snow), you can find me at home in Bellingham, WA riding bikes, or teaching my 3 year old son to ski.”īelow is what Grant considers his Top 5 photographs of his career thus far.Michael Clarke, in Ghostbuster attire, is focusing his efforts on filmmaking. “Today, if I’m not away chasing snow (luckily nearby Mt. That internship helped me jump start a career crisscrossing the globe, chasing snow with some of the world’s best athletes.”įast forward the better part of two decades, he says he’s fortunate to have never formally used his engineering degree, and instead has been able to continue to produce images for the likes of Powder, NatGeo, IKON pass and others. “In college I was fortunate to score a coveted internship at Powder magazine despite being an engineering major (I guess they liked the pics I sent). Over the years that obsession grew, and soon he was reading every ski publication he could get his hands on, cover to cover, numerous times. Ever since his parents dragged me on skis behind them as a toddler, Grant Gunderson has been obsessed with skiing.