PHOTOS: A Decade Of Shred

In 2002, a young Swedish snowboarder-photographer named Daniel Blom spent a winter in Whistler, where he hoped to work on his camera skills, shred some pow and, if he was lucky, meet some snowboarding big shots. One night in a crowded bar, his right-place-at-the-right-time plan paid off. A friend introduced him to a yet-unknown Nicolas Müller and filmmaker Patrick Armbrüster of Absinthe Films who, it turned out, needed a photographer. Was Daniel any good, he asked? [slideshow:572]

Like any brash kid who sees the door of opportunity open, he leapt through. He joined the film crew and, from the very first day of shooting sold six photographs to magazines. Blom had officially arrived. In the years since then, he's traveled the world from Europe to Japan to Alaska and back, photographing top riders like Müller, Gigi Rüf and Travis Rice for Absinthe, Snowboarder and Europe's Method Magazine, in addition to commercial clients like Nike, Helly Hansen, Quiksilver and Zeal. Along the way, he's developed a hallmark style, shooting as he does with a Hasselblad medium format film camera.

Recently, as Blom branched out into photographing other genres, he decided to put together a book—Drifting Decade—that is, in essence, a 240-page ode to the drifting, go-where-the-work-and-snow-take-me lifestyle of the world's top snowboarders. It's chockfull of portraiture, lifestyle shots and enough on-mountain action to stoke you for the coming season.

Check out the gallery of photographs from Blom's Drifting Decade, which is available now for 65 euros, and see more of his work on his website, danielblom.com.

(Daniel Blom)