The day kicked off with me asking Eric Lawrenuk to come shoot in Furry Creek, but that was shut down for him wanting to go hike a trail to buff it… So I phoned Ross Measures and he informed me that he was meant to go building with Eric, taking quick advantage of this I called back Eric saying that there’s a build going on with Ross. I was on my way to Eric’s place and Ross swiftly took up the opportunity to carpool with the famous GULLY! Best part of that is Ross was actually running on a faster schedule than Eric and I. Soon as we got up the hill to the spot we got cracking in a hard way roughing out a large berm and moving yards of soil.

It wasn’t long before the Vanderham brothers decided to show up and everything went to hell in a hand basket… Just kidding. Having a crew of six, all on the same building level and all swinging tools getting one vision complete was awesome. I’ve never seen something run that productively without turning into a social event! We wrapped up the day with everything done before dusk even started coming, and everyone decided it was sandwich o’clock.

That was a solid day.

Shot these last January when these guys with a glaucoma condition took a trip out to Calgary to ride some hand rails.

Were’re still working on getting some backing for the project together to make it happen to it’s fullest potential we’re hoping for but here’s a bit of background on the identity of Ultramontane I put together:

The goal for the logo and branding is we wanted it to really communicate an idea of simplicity. Clean and modern, with the choice of the typeface and logo weight I considered having it resemble branding that would be fit for vintage mountaineering companies.

The use of the mono-spaced font, Letter Gothic, looks clean and sharp, in all uppercase it works well for the logo-type, when written content is distributed the type works easily as body text. The use of the slashed o is connotative of it’s use in Nordic languages, particularly Norwegian. For me there is a strong lure to the idea of the fjords and pine forests, I draw a connection to Howe Sound and British Columbia’s Coast, which is the main location we are choosing to shoot for this project. The other connection to the winter drawn from the slashed O relates to the planned time-frame for the project.

The icon itself was stemmed from the concept of having it look like written language, resembling the runic alphabet. I could write a ton on that and it’s connection to more Scandinavian Culture, but you could just read the Wikipedia entry and be done with it. The mountain form it creates also separates to form the letters “UM”. The plan was this was to create two forms that would be capable of working independently once brand familiarity is created.

This past week has been spent getting proposals together I could go on and on about the paper stocks and binding methods but… If you want to know more about the project, and want to help back it be in touch and we can send you one.

- Derek

Connor under the rock line – pre-soil:

Rock line with soil:

View of line, into gap before it funnels back into singletrack:

Standing above the Rock line, plagued with flies:

Looking down the first steep, onto the ledge, then drops into the roll:

Mossy run-in:

Dirty hands:

Old volcanic peak. Nobody has been to the summit according to trusty wikipedia.

When I built this computer I wanted something future-proof as almost every few years photo file sizes double. Currently when I’m working on a layered .tiff they sit at around 300mb each. Having a few open to work through at a time can be super intensive so I wanted to build something with fairly future-proof speed. Storage also is something that is super crucial when you are creating multiple files of that size, things add up quick. Interfaces and ports are the third consideration I put in when building this computer, USB3 will soon the the new standard, as well with Sata III (6gb/s) and e-sata possibilities.

Here’s a breakdown of the full build, and reasoning why and modifications and configurations:

1 x Intel Core i7 2600K Quad Core Unlocked Hyperthreading Processor LGA1155 3.4GHZ Sandy Bridge 8MB
– While this socket isn’t the most current it was the most value for speed. I have the processor over-clocked to 4.6ghz.

1 x Noctua NH-D14 LGA1155/1156/1366/AM3 I7/I5/PHENOM Heatpipe Cooler W/ NF-P14 140MM & NF-P12 120MM Fan
– This keeps things cool, and is the reason why my processor can run at 4.6ghz. It’s also not too loud.

1 x ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution P67 LGA1155 4PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 SATA3 USB3.0 GBLAN Sandy Bridge B3 Motherboard
– The Asus BIOS has been completely redone, and makes over-clocking something super simple, also allows for fast drive configurations. This board has 2 Sata III ports and 6 Sata II ports, this allows ample storage. This motherboard also allows me to upgrade to Intel Xeon processors.

2 x G.SKILL Ripjaws X F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-1866 CL9-10-9-28 Memory
– I have not managed to max this yet which is something worth mentioning. I’m running it at 1866mhz. It’s memory so I can’t really say much more.

1 x Fractal Design Define R3 Black ATX Mid Tower Silent Computer Case 2X5.25 8X3.5INT No PS Front USB
– Designed to be quiet, and has a well thought out design for cable routing and ventilation. It doesn’t look bad (like a space ship or monster) so that’s huge points.

1 x OCZ Z-SERIES 1000W 80+ Gold Certified 24PIN ATX 83A 12V Afc Modular Power Supply W/ 1 *IR-$130.00*
– Modular supplies are nice, you don’t have 1000 octopus arms in your case, you plug in only what you need.

2 x Patriot PW120GS25SSDR Wildfire Series 120GB 2.5IN SATA3 SandForce Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD
– These are fast. I have them running as scratch discs for Adobe, with my OS and application all on them. It was a headache to get sorted out, and I’m not too pleased with how Patriot dealt with things. If you get them just upgrade the firmware and all should be fine. That being said I did waste almost two weeks dealing with Blue Screens, Hangs and Crashes, and after viewing the Patriot forums I realised I wasn’t alone. I don’t get why a company would release a product with such major known issues.

1 x LG GH24LS70 24X SATA Lightscribe Internal DVD Writer Burner DVDRW Optical Drive Black OEM
– I put discs into it, they come back out. I make disc’s with it. Its fine, not looking for too much here.

1 x Nvidia Quadro FX 3800
– This card is pretty awesome coming from a ATI Radeon XT 1650 with 256mb. This runs with 1gb storage and is CUDA capable, for working with graphics acceleration in Photoshop, it loads the tiles faster than I can scroll through the image.

Additional Storage
- The two Wildfire drives are for the OS, apps and scratch discs, the LG DVD drive occupies a SATA port, so that leaves me with 4 more ports. Currently I have two Seagate Barracuda 1tb drives running internally, and a Wester Digital 1tb Caviar Black as an external. The two internal drives are separated as Work/Play on their own drives respectively. The external backs up the ‘Work’ Drive. In the future I’m going to move to four 3tb Western Digital HDD’s configured as a RAID1 to keep everything safe. I’ll scrap the E-SATA external for a USB3 external to bring back and forth between home and the office.

That is that for the breakdown of my new computer. Total cost was just under $2400.00, more than an iMac. Less that a Mac Pro running a similar configuration. For the future it’s easy to swap and upgrade parts without having to purchase a whole new computer… but next major build, funds providing, it will be time for a Mac Pro I think, the hard drive failures I dealt with on the Wildfire III’s was enough of a headache for me not to want to deal with custom builds any more.

Here’s a good vibes / product placement shot from the same shoot.

http://derekdix.com/romstad.html

Also over the last month I’ve had the pleasure of helping out Alterna Films with their intro for 13 o’clock, which is coming out this fall. I’ve shot a bunch of behind the scenes stuff that is up on push.ca:

Part I
Part II

Here’s a couple of my favorite shots: