When Whistler Blackcomb announced that it was hitting the pause button on the Deep Winter Photo Challenge this year, the news hit the team at Origin hard.
After all, the contest—which marked its 13th year in 2019—represents the same aesthetic as the outdoor-oriented content and marketing agency, says principal and creative director, Danielle Kristmanson.
"It's the intersection of where we live: creativity and sport," she says. "And we buy photography from a lot of those photographers [who have competed]. Almost as soon as we heard it was cancelled, we started talking about what we should do."
And so, in mid-December, amidst the holiday bustle, they came up with the idea for an event called Uprising, set to take place on Feb. 22 at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler.
While it will still be based on photography, the team decided to add a few new elements, in part to leave space for Deep Winter to return in future years.
Five well-established professional Whistler photographers will be paired with the same number of up-and-coming photographers. Those pairs will then put together a team of athletes—also made up of a mix of professional and emerging stars—and head out to shoot images for the same three to five days.
Their resulting slideshows will be debuted at the event.
The main idea, Kristmanson says, is to nurture a new crop of talent in the resort. "We felt if we could create a format where the mentorship was built in—athletes and photographers have the ability to learn from one another," she says.
One sign that they were on the right track? Kristmanson reached out to the Fairmont Chateau Whistler and Tourism Whistler to partner on the event and "they responded in minutes saying they were in."
"To me, that was almost the best gauge of how the community would feel, the fact that Barrett [Fisher, President and CEO at Tourism Whistler] and Norm [Mastalir, managing director at the Fairmont] responded so quickly," she says.
"I am excited to see the team at Origin is keeping the tradition alive in 2020, while adding their own unique take on the event with the Uprising mentorship format," Fisher says, in a release. "This photography [event] represents the spirit of who Whistler is at its core, so Tourism Whistler was pleased to support as a partner. We look forward to seeing the show, and we encourage the community to come out and support this great event."
Photographers have similarly been keen to take part.
"So many people have reached out already," Kristmanson says. "One of our staff posted it on a Whistler photographer Facebook page. We're letting the pros pick from a pool of people they know themselves, but we started making a list of everyone who reached out to us and gave that to them too."
Next up, Origin will announce who's on the teams and tickets for the event, which will double as a fundraiser for Protect Our Winters Canada, will go on sale on Jan. 8.
"It's a really tight crunch, but we felt really committed to making it happen," Kristmanson says.
For more information, check out originoutside.com/uprising after Jan. 6.
