Jonathan Neufeld Outdoor adventure photography and mountain life

Jonathan Neufeld and Keith Szlater have published an article in the October 2010 issue of Outdoor Photographer Magazine! You can read the article and more after the break

Keith and I volunteered to photograph our Search and Rescue team the Calgary Search and Rescue Association (CALSARA) during one of the two-day Swift Water Rescue courses that they were doing. September was unseasonably cold this year and so it was two very intense days of water rescue practise, throwing rope bags, and swimming in the  chilly Kananaskis River.

We staged at Canoe Meadows just past the northern boundary of K-Country and then it was a short walk from the parking lot down to the river’s edge. Sarah (the instructor) had timed it so that we would be there while the dam was open and the flow nice and high, there isn’t much point in doing a Swift Water Rescue course if there isn’t any water is there?!

Everyone was surprisingly eager to get in the water even though it was a chilly day, I was pretty happy to stay on dry land myself. I love the mountains but aside from one disasterous and oft-cited run down the Kan in a kayak I’m really not much of a water-guy.

The course  focused on self-rescue and assisting ones team members in case they fell into the water. Sarah quickly ran people through what to down when you fall in and everyone got a chance to float down the rapids and practise staying the safe areas. This is a great spot for such a course, they have built a kayak course here so there are a lot of varied water features to play in. After that it was throwing rope bags, what to do if you’re headed right for a “sweeper”, and then how to cross a river as a team.

From a photography point of view it was blast to work with everyone. We mostly stayed out of the way and used longer lenses to iosolate the action. The shore was wide and broad and gave us great sight lines to capture the right moments, we even had a few rock outcroppings to climb up onto and shoot down towards the river. Keith had a cold-water imersion suit on(!) and actually spent some time in the river to get shots right at river level.

I’ve put together a slide-show of the best images from the weekend below.