Re Wikstrom - Inspiring Women through photography

Re Wikstrom has mountain biked in Canada, rafted the Idaho-Oregon border, ski toured in the Arctic, and traveled to many a wild place --and all alongside strong, inspiring women. Her mission is close to her heart: to use photography to bring female athletes to the forefront of the outdoor world. With a BFA in Photography and Visual Media from RIT, local and international publications, and her past role as Senior Photographer and Marketing Photo Manager at Backcountry.com, Re’s work is as much a product of her dedication and experience as it is passion.

During her tenure in the industry, Re landed the first cover shot of a woman on Backcountry Magazine, the first all-female cover shot for Skiing Magazine, and was the first woman to be blind juried into the Pro Photographer Showdown at the World Ski and Snowboard Festival. She counts fresh air and sunshine among her basic needs and jumps at any chance to trade laughs around a campfire.

Website - https://www.rewikstromphoto.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rewikstrom/

Transcript

You. Hello, everyone. Thank you for being here.

You're listening to your photography podcast. I'll be your host, Adam Phillips. I'm an active lifestyle and commercial business photographer and videographer with over 16 years of experience.

While I may have a good knowledge base for creating images and video, everyone has a unique perspective on creating still and motion pictures and the do's and don'ts of operating a business. That's why I created your photography podcast: so that we can make a space for learning and growing a community. Whether you're just starting to find your eye in photography or you are a seasoned professional, there will always be something here for you.

Hey, everyone. I have Re Wickstrom here today with us on the podcast. I'm just going to let her introduce herself again.

I'm Ree Wickstrom. I'm an action sports and outdoor lifestyle photographer. I focus my own work on female athletes specifically, and I also spent about an 18-year tenure working for Backcountry.com.

I was their senior marketing photographer and photo editor. Nice. So, the first question I have for you is why or what do you enjoy most about photography? I think I love the creation aspect of it.

Some of it I can't even totally describe to you why I love it. I just know that when I haven't been shooting for a while and then I'm out there with my camera, I just feel like this is what I was meant to do. I'm so happy right now, and I sort of think about that and reflect on that.

And I think it must be that I truly love the act of creating in the moment. And a lot of it, for me, is taking the bits and pieces of what is happening around me and making something out of it. Certainly, there is sometimes still a lot of planning that goes into it, but then, working as an outdoor photographer, there are a lot of variables that you just have to deal with on the fly.

No, I love that answer. I was recently on the San Juan with my buddy, and there was a lightning storm, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I got this. So I get where you're at with the act of creating and the joy and passion that's behind that.

And that's really why the podcast came to be. So you've worked at Backcountry for a long time, and were you always doing photography before that job? How long have you been doing photography, and what got you started? This might be a long answer. You can tell me to speed it up or give you the cliff notes if it starts to get too much of like a rambly side quest of a story.

But let's see. I guess I really got into photography when I was, I don't know, late elementary school or middle school. I have an older brother and one sibling older brother.

He's five years older than me. And he and his best friend were really into photography. I think his best friend kind of got him into photography.

And especially when your sibling is five years older, you look up to them, and you're like, oh my gosh, everything you do is the coolest. But that was kind of one of the initial sparks. And when I was about twelve or something in middle school, I got a subscription to Powder magazine.

And sometimes, I feel like this is totally cliche, but it is 100% the truth. I started reading that magazine, and one of the first articles I read was about a bunch of ski photographers living in Europe. They were called the Klambin Kids.

And I just thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I wanted to do that. Whenever I would get a magazine, I would read the masthead all the photographer names listed, and I would scroll through and look at all the photos and look at all the photo captions. That sparked my interest more into ski photography.

And then skiing was just something I had done all my life since I was really little. And I feel very lucky and very fortunate that it has been a part of my life for so long. And I was always like the chubby kid growing up.

And kids can be mean little assholes sometimes. Yeah. But where I grew up, not everyone skied.

We had to drive many hours to go skiing. And I knew skiing is something that I'm good at. And if kids were being mean in school or whatever, it was a thing that gave me confidence in my life.

And so it was just like a really important thing in my life. And I guess fast forward into high school, I also had, again, very lucky, great opportunity to take photo courses in high school. Had a really great photo teacher who really pushed me to go to college to study photography as well.

I thought, oh, maybe I'll do psychology or forestry or something that helps the world more. But he was really insistent and hard to ignore. And I finally made that decision that, okay, I'm going to do it.

If I'm going to do it, I'm going to go to school for it. And that is the short, long answer of how I got into it. No, I like that.

That's great. Great answer. Short or long, it doesn't matter.

Everyone's story is different. I really like that. Yeah.

You've worked with a lot of different athletes, especially, like, within the ski side of stuff. You've done some stuff with Stephanie Niche and I think, like, pip hunt some stuff with the mountain bike things and things. How did that all come to be and how did.

Well, like I mentioned, skiing was always a big thing for me, and it was truly ski photography that really sparked that desire to pursue ski photography as a career or to pursue photography in general as a career. It was the ski photography that drew me in. So that's where I started.

That's also what I do the best. So while I was in college, I applied for an internship at Powder magazine. And by some miracle of miracles, I got the internship.

And that helped a bit with starting to kind of network and meet some mean. And I had also made some friends just in the ski world in general from being a skier. Although I lived in upstate New York at the time because that's where I was going to school, which is not well known for its skiing, but it actually has a phenomenal sea culture because of all the snow they get from the Great Lakes and the lake effect snow.

So there's really awesome sea culture up there. And I have a lot of great friends from school that are skiers. In fact, I don't know that I have a single friend left from the photo school.

They're all just friends from the ski team. Yeah. Which most of them were, I don't know, computer science, engineering, biotech, and then me, the creative kid.

Yeah. Let's see. I don't know where I was going with that.

Total side note, squirrel. No, you're good. Okay, hang on.

We're going to have to bring that back. So kind of how you got started within and started your mission with the ski photography specifically. Okay, thank you.

I should have the question highlighted on my screen while I'm answering it. So, yeah, skiing was what I knew. I mean, I used to sit in my basement and watch ski movies on exercise on this old Schwinn exercise bike.

I'm like, I'm going to move them to the mountains and be a skier. I didn't grow up in Big mountains. I just knew that I wanted to go check them out at some point.

And I knew that's where I needed to move to, to pursue a career in ski photography. When I moved to Utah, I started shooting the big mountain ski comps, and that's how I started to get to know the local women athletes and make connections there and slowly just started making connections and then going out and shooting, not just at the comps, but going out and shooting just for us. And it kind of grew from there.

That's cool. What are some bigger things that you learned in the internship? Maybe with Powder magazine? That is a very great question that I haven't often thought about. Mostly I feel like I should have asked more questions when I was there.

I mean, that is a takeaway. I wish that I had asked more questions. I do think it was very helpful to see how a magazine is run from the back end.

And I met some phenomenal people and just started to learn how the whole industry worked. You wouldn't expect this, but I did some Photoshop work for the art director on some occasions and I really learned how to use the pen tool during that internship, which is super random. Most photographers wouldn't think about that.

I don't know if most learn that I actually did a focus in graphic design. So it is a thing that, like, formally learned, but, like, really got to use it in practice there. That feels so random that that's a thing and that I remember that.

But, yeah, I mean, it was phenomenal to be exposed to so many amazing images coming in and see what Dave Reddick, who was their photo editor for a very long know, definitely a legend. To see what he would keep and what he would not keep and start to understand that I would see a submission come in and think, oh, my gosh, this is so cool. How could you not keep this? But over time, you learn he has seen so many photos and the value of having that Rolodex catalog in his brain, to be able to then truly pick out what is new and captivating for their audience, that was really cool.

To see and experience and understand and gain a better understanding of. That's awesome. I was going to ask you if you didn't maybe get the opportunity to kind of see how his whole workflow went because he gave me 30 minutes on the phone once to talk through my stuff and I was like, sweet.

But also I'm like, I bet you don't do this for everybody. Yeah. At the time, this was very early.

Two thousand s. And he was still mostly dealing with film submissions. Oh, wow.

Very few were coming in as digital submissions. And if they were, they were coming in as a lot of them were coming in as TIFF files, which are even back then they were pretty large. Yeah.

So it was a lot of slides coming in and slides in slide sheets and going through with a grease pen to mark on the plastic slide sheets like, keep or don't keep. And then I would help with filing those into what he kept in the filing cabinet versus what we would send back to the photographers. That's cool.

Yeah, it is pretty cool. I don't even know how that on the film side of stuff, because I know on the digital side, you'd send your stuff in and then you would wait and you're like, hope that gets picked up. And then he'd email you back with like, these are the ones we want.

Send me the DNG files. I had some images get stolen once. Well, the car got stolen and I lost the images, but I was like, do you want to take JPEgs? They're on the website.

Anyway. Sucked. There was like, seven.

That does suck. Film or digital? Digital. Like, I had the hard drive in the car with and the laptop.

Anyway. That's sort of, like, heart wrenching. It was rough.

I was like, you want seven? There was like, seven photos. I was like, they're gone. I'm sorry.

Oh, it's all good. You know what? As much as it sucked for me, I also feel bad for the athletes that I done stuff with because I was like, that would have been them in powder. Yeah.

Well, imagine if you only had one single version of that on film and there was no real way to back it up, and you were putting it in a paper envelope and sending it through the mail, hoping that it made it there and hoping that it eventually made it back to you. I'm sure there were, I don't know, accidents, but I don't know of any, thankfully. I'm sure they did happen, but as far as losing slides in the mail or them getting damaged by the post office, what do you mean you didn't.

It worked odly well. Yeah. That's good.

So you've had a lot of years as a photographer. Do you have a favorite lens or a go to lens and why? I don't. Yeah.

Nice. I do think as. As photographers and as you're just kind of learning over your career, you have sort of favorites in the moment at the time, especially when you're younger, you may start with only one or two lenses, and then you get a third one, and that one's your favorite for a while.

But I truly don't have a favorite, and it is really just what do I need and how do I make it happen and what's the best lens or tool for the job? I mean, is there one that I use more than the rest? Probably. Sure. I'm sure it might be similar for you, as an action sports photographer, you tend to rely a lot on the 24 to 70 and the 70 to 200 because that's the best way to stay more like light and nimble and out of the app.

Keep Things sometimes, yeah. And to keep your kit a little more compact for hiking or whatever you might be doing. Hiking, biking, skiing with all your camera gear.

But then, I don't know, I'll kind of rotate sometimes. What is that third or fourth lens in the pack or depending on what I'm doing, certainly. Sometimes you bring more, sometimes less.

Yeah. Do you ever feel like you've ever brought more than you needed? Does that happen? Oh, certainly. But I would also rather be over prepared most of the time, unless I will say I was shooting for a ski mountaineering camp, and I do think I had a bit too much weight in my pack for that week.

Yeah, it hasn't happened all the time, but that particular one, I was like, you know what? It was a new camera. I was all excited to use it, but I actually didn't need to bring that and all of what goes along with it. Yeah, you don't know until you're in it, and then you're like, heavy.

Favorite project you worked on or a recent project you're stoked about, then you can kind of go back to your whole mission and everything and the awards and stuff that you got with that and how maybe that maybe ties into that question, or maybe you have something completely different. It's hard to choose a favorite. I feel like.

I don't know, it's like a parent choosing a favorite child, so to speak. It's really hard to choose a favorite. There's certainly some that stand out in my memory a bit more.

I don't know that I truly have a favorite, and it also tends to be a thing where sometimes the last, most recent one feels like the favorite because it's like the newest and you're all jazzed up on how it went and what happened, especially if it was maybe a new experience. I definitely have a recent project that I'm extra psyched on, so I don't know, I guess I could talk through that one. Some of my favorites from the past I did a really cool trip to with.

And like, you know, my personal work is all focused with women athletes. So there were four of us that did a trip to Norway, and we were staying in. THey have this hut system, and so we were staying in these various huts.

One of them, we had to take a boat to get to, and the commercial boat was kind of expensive. So two of the women I was traveling with found a fisherman at the docks who would agreed to take us in and pick us up a few days later. And that was just random and wild in and of itself.

And we got out there to this fjord, and there was this guided group that was leaving, and there was like a Norwegian guide and a French guide. And it was really fascinating to see how each of them treated us differently. The French guides giving us shit and asking if we brought food or if are you actually prepared? Are you really going to stay out there? And kind of giving us a hard time.

He didn't believe we could handle it. And the Norwegian guide was just sharing avalanche info and route info. And in Norway, it's not weird to see four women out in the back.

Yeah, just normal, like, oh, that's normal. We'll just talk about the snow conditions. And it was just absolutely beautiful up there.

It was a phenomenal trip. One of my favorites in the memory banks. Let's see.

Most recently, I have a friend who decided a little bit later in life that she wanted to be a pilot. Nice. That's cool.

And over COVID, I started shooting photos of the moonrise. And she said to me one day, hey, do you think you could take a photo of a plane flying in front of the moon? The full moon? And I thought about it and I was like, oh, yeah, that seems, I don't know, easy enough. I mean, maybe I could figure out just the flight path from the airport and line it up.

That seems doable. And then I thought about it more and I thought, gosh, you know what? This photo, it shouldn't be just any airplane flying through a moon. It should be you, my friend, who was at the time training to be a pilot.

It should be you flying the plane through the moon. And so she continued her path through flight school, and she's now a working pilot. And so in June of this year, we figured know, hey, there's a full moon coming.

I've got the time. You've got the time. And she's currently working at an airport in Moab.

And so we planned to attempt this photo of her flying a plane in front of the moon. And we got to the week of, and I looked at the weather forecast, and it was for clouds and rain in Moab, of all places. And I was feeling pretty sad about it, a little defeated because I was looking at my upcoming schedule and where it lined up with the next full moons.

And I thought, well, there's one that I might be around for, but I can't guarantee it right now. And then I don't even know if I could do this until next year, realistically. Yeah, that's like only one opportunity every month.

And then I thought about it some more and I figured out a solution. So for me, with that photo, I didn't want to do the actual full moon because it rises after sunset, and then it's just a bright spot in a dark sky. I wanted to be able to see some landscape and color around it.

So I was aiming for the two days before. When it's an almost full moon, most people can't tell the difference, or who cares? Like, whatever, it's an almost full moon. It still looks really cool.

But those were still the days that it was going to be cloudy. And I was looking at the data, the moon data, and then I realized, hey, all we have to do is switch this a few days. We're going to do the moon setting instead of the moon rising because that'll be the two to three days after happening around the morning golden hour, but, like, of sunrise instead of sunset.

And so I went down and I spent all day driving around, trying to find the perfect spot to shoot from and figure out what I was trying to get in my vantage point. And ultimately, it didn't totally matter because there's rules about how low you can fly your airplane to the ground. And because of the, instead of facing east, we're now facing west, and there's less landscape, higher elevation that I can utilize.

But I don't know. It was great. We put a lot of work into it.

I went down there and then we were waking up at like, gosh, the sunrise is so early in June. Yeah, like very O dark 30 in the morning. It was at least five, maybe four in the morning.

One of the days, like, the day we actually did it because I needed time to drive out there, she needed time to go pick up the plane, and then we had to work out. I don't know. I love trying to work out and figure out logistics on things that I haven't done before, but it all came together and it was phenomenal, and I'm so psyched we were able to do it.

It was a little bit cloudy that morning, too, and I was starting to worry like, oh, no, clouds are going to be a problem. But the clouds really made it because those were lit up beautiful colors during the sunrise. And there were times, though, when we'd lose the moon behind a cloud.

And I'm like, all right, just do a lap. But that's one of my favorites. I think the photo is really cool, but I also love the story behind it.

Most pilots I don't know go into it earlier and through a different route. And I love seeing that she just decided, hey, I want to do this. And she did it.

Yeah, she didn't do it in her twenty s. I think some people would be like, oh, that's late. But I think it's so freaking cool.

You can do that whenever. Yeah, no, that's awesome. I think it's interesting.

Sometimes people will just look at a photo and go, oh, that's pretty. And then they walk past it. But to know the whole backstory behind how it all came down and came together, I think that's really special.

That's awesome. Yeah, it's certainly more personal and special for me because I know that she was working multiple jobs to put herself through flight school, and it was a journey, it was a process. And now she's there and we made the photo happen.

Yeah, that's awesome. Favorite subject of photograph? That's the next question. You may have already answered this, but maybe not.

I don't know. I mean, if we're talking activity wise, being like an action outdoor sports photographer, I think skiing will probably always be my number one. But in a bit more General terms, my favorite thing to shoot is women doing awesome things.

Especially things that are a little bit outside the norm and a little bit that break the stereotype because we still live in a culture where women are perceived as less than or less capable. So when I get the opportunity to shoot women doing awesome things at a high level, I love that. Whatever it is, whether it's skiing or flying an airplane or something else altogether, that's what I love.

That's awesome. No, I think that's really cool. And I think it's super unique, too.

Like you said, still, in today's society, that women are kind of perceived as like less than or whatever. And I really have tried to bring more women people or women photographers. Women people.

I've tried to bring more women photographers on this podcast. And that's kind of why I want people to feel capable and empowered and see other people that are doing awesome things and being able to then reflect and go, I can do that. If they can do that, I can do that.

And I think the photography, especially when we go back to the film days, it was very much a male dominated career field. It was, yeah, I do think it's been changing and it's been really cool to see it evolve and change. Yeah, I agree.

It's funny because I say it's not. I shouldn't say it's funny, but maybe it is. I don't know.

But if you get down to the science of the eyeball, women's eyes have more rods and cones or something than men's eyes. They can see more colors and more stuff. So to think that they don't know or can't see something.

And then my wife helps me out with a lot of photography stuff. She's like, you should probably reframe that. Or like, if there's been a few times I've photographed a couple of friends, like a couple of pictures or whatever, and she's like, mainly it helps that she work with Akita candidates.

But she's like, you did not oppose people at all. And I'm like, you're right. Portrait photography is absolutely its own skill set.

This is true. And it's very different from action. This is true.

The next question, and this is kind of a unique and sort of fun question, I think. But if you could change anything about a photography field or industry, what would that be? Should have thought about this one more. I mean, I think.

I mean, I think pricing is phenomenally confusing and I wish there were better tools out there to help, especially younger photographers, figure it out. Yes. And I'm sure you get a similar answer from so many photographers.

Yeah, that was kind of along the lines of what Scott Markowitz had mentioned in his. Yeah, I mean, I absolutely echo his sentiment. I listened to that one last week 100%.

It's interesting. It doesn't seem any different from when I started. That was always a thing that I learned, learn how to price, don't undercut.

And I've always tried to seek out other photographers that have been around longer than I have when I need advice, because I don't want to be the photographer that comes in and prices too low and then is hindering the industry as a whole. I hope I've done a decent job of that. But it's this weird.

I don't know, it's a weird thing. There's pricing software that I use and I think it's a bit outdated and maybe we needed some sort of like subscription service so that it's not just outdated info and it's constantly updated and we need to share more information between us all. It's interesting.

I was recently listening to, there's this podcast called the Financial Feminist, and they talk about how it hurts women to not talk about finances. Right. And it's like this taboo thing.

Let's use like a corporate job environment, for example. It's sort of this taboo thing to talk about money and how much you make, and it hurts women more, right. Because women make less money on the dollar versus men.

And if we're not talking about it more, you don't even know that you should be higher or valued higher to even try and get there. Yeah, I agree. I was very new to figuring out my prices when I got out of the army in the sense of sending a photo submission to a magAzine.

They have their set prices, or setting them to backcountry. They have their set prices. This is what we pay.

Which is all great. No. And then you're just like, oh, sweet, this is what they pay.

So you already know what to expect. You're not going into it blind. But then when you have a company privately wants to license a photo from you or wants to hire you for a day rate, and you're like, I don't know.

I ran into that the first time at the outdoor retailer show, and the guy at Muck Boots asked me, he goes, how much would you charge for this? And I was like, $400. And he goes, $400? I like a good deal, but I don't want to rip you off. And I was like, how much are people? And he laid out the prices.

He's like, this is what we would expect to pay anywhere from twelve to $3,500 to license this photo, depending on our use and what we're going to do with it. And then we kind of talked day rates, too, and it was about the same. And I was just like, I am severely undercutting what I need to be charging.

And then you kind of have to figure out where you fall within that spectrum of you as a photographer and what you're worth and what experience you bring and what you offer that client. But anyway, that was a little bit into the weeds with that. No, that's so awesome that he took the time to say that and even be so honest with you and not just take advantage of you.

That's really amazing. Yeah, I think along those lines. That's great that he knew that and he was honest about it.

I think there's so many people that come into the photo and art buying side of things that don't understand pricing, and so many people in marketing roles, and especially higher up marketing roles that do not understand the value of photography. And so many marketing projects have these tiny budgets for photography. It seems so often like an afterthought.

Yeah. So maybe as we talk through this, that might be the bigger thing that I would love to see change is that side of the industry having better education on the value of photography pricing and knowing to budget for it in advance so that you're not coming to photographers and saying, hey, I'm sorry, we only have this tiny budget. Can you do this project for less than it's worth and less than you're worth? Because I think that happens a lot and it's a huge contributing factor.

Yeah. And then people that are honest with the fact that they need to pay that much, and like, he was with me, like you said, give him a gold star. Whoever that was, he gets the gold star.

Maybe ten of them. Yeah. For real.

I guess after that question, what goals for photography? Your life? Yeah. What goals for photography and life do you have? Yeah. Such a big question.

Let's see. I mean, there's so many things that I want to do. I don't know if I'll get to all of them in my lifetime.

And sometimes I go back and forth with where should I spend the time and energy and effort? I certainly want to continue to shoot with women athletes and do commercial projects that focus on women athletes, where I think my particular point of view can be very valuable. I would also love to do projects with women in general, more projects along the lines of the one I did with Barb flying through the moon and branch out a little bit more from just action sports. I also love driving and I've never shot like professional women drivers.

I would love to do that. At least give it a try and see where it goes. Fun fact about my family and the brother who helped inspire me as a photographer when I was younger.

He is a professional race car driving coach. Performance driving coach. Oh, wow.

And sometimes he drives in races and other times he's working as an engineer to set up the cars, and other times he's coaching. So we love driving in my family. That's cool.

And that's an area, yeah. That I haven't dove into just yet. But I would really love to.

I try to think right with this mission of bringing the type of imagery of women into the world that I want to see to help change the stereotypes, to help create a cultural shift in how we view women. I'm Always trying to figure out how do I put those images out there more? Where can they be most effective? I don't know. Maybe that involves fine art sales, right? Posters or fine art prints and getting those.

Maybe doing some gallery showings or just getting them out there more and in more ways, I'm open to ideas, too. I'm like, I don't know if I have any right now. A long time ago, I thought I got to get on Oprah, but now that's not an option.

So I don't know. Nice. No, I think that's cool.

I think in all of those different disciplines of the sports world, whether it's a driver or whatever, I think it's super important that women get the focus that they deserve because a lot of men don't think women can drive or you can't hack it. Three days in the mountains, et cetera. I think with my wife's pregnant, we're having a daughter, and my wife's scared of a lot of things.

And I'm like, my daughter's not going to be that way. She's going to do a lot of stuff. I'm going to get her into things.

But, yeah, kind of like you mentioned, just making sure that people. I think it's awesome what you're doing. THank you.

Yeah. Last Question. Do you have any tips or advice for anyone beginning in photography or wanting to start a photography career? Tips or advice? Certainly.

SHOOT as MUCH as you can. I think every time you go out and shoot, you're going to learn. I think it's really great to reach out to other photographers and network with them for a range of reasons.

You can learn from photographers that have been doing it more than you have. Back to the whole discussion on rates and pricing and undercutting and not undercutting. It's great to have a network of photographers that you can talk to and understand where rates should be.

Here's a big one that I'm very passionate about. It's a very nerdy thing, but huge is learning how to organize your images, especially during my time managing the photo library for backcountry. You've got to have an organizational System.

It doesn't have to be the same as mine, but it needs to be organized right. Utilize your keywords. Utilize your metadata.

Don't send photos off to a company if it doesn't have your metadata embedded into it. Make sure you have your own file naming structure. If you're working with someone that hasn't said, hey, the file name must be this spec, make sure you have your own file naming structure because sending off a photo with a file name of Underscore DSC 500.

How many underscore DSC 500 file names are already floating out there in the world? Too many. Too many. So make sure you've got your own file naming structure, file organization, it will help you tremendously.

And try to set that up from the get go because trying to go back and organize is the big headache. Or if you haven't done it, maybe don't stress that you haven't done it, but just choose to start like, okay, I'm going to start today, and from today on, it's going to be organized. But I think that's a huge thing.

No, that's definitely true. Especially, I think if anyone's trying to submit images to. I've never really done it, but like a stock site, stuff needs to be in there.

Yeah, for sure. Sweet. Yeah.

So your awards, honors, things that. Yes, that. Let's talk about it.

Okay. I've had a few really awesome ones. I'm generally not good bragging about them, so I appreciate the opportunity to put it out there.

People that are listening to this won't see this, but behind me on the wall that you can see this larger framed cover photo was the very first. It was a my first cover photo on a magazine, and it's backcountry magazine. It was the first time that a woman athlete was ever featured on a cover of that magazine.

And I'm pretty proud of that to make that happen. And this one, I know you can't see them super well because of the angle. That's a cover for Skiing magazine.

They had had women on their covers in the past, but they had never had a cover of a woman that was shot by a woman photographer. So that was the first. They were referring to it as first all woman cover shot, which is also pretty cool.

And I had the opportunity, I don't know, earlier in my career, we'll say, to participate in the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival pro photographer showdown. Longest photo contest name ever. But I was a finalist for that, and I was the first woman who was blind juried into that contest, which again, at the time, pretty cool.

What does that mean exactly? Blind juried. Blind, blind juried. So that means for this particular contest, we had to send in a slideshow, like a movie format, but slideshow of our images, short version maybe.

It was three minutes for the submission and the judges had no idea who the photographer was, so they just viewed the slideshow. There's no intro slide or credit slide. It's just simply the images.

So they have no idea who the photographer is, what the gender of the photographer is, what they look like. That's cool. That was, at the time, pretty special to be blindered into the finals.

So then trying to remember how many finalists. I think five. I want to say five finalists up there.

And it took place in this massive event space with what they referred to as the Octo screen. So there were eight screens in the middle, and people, all the seats were positioned around kind of like the screens were the donut holes. So no matter where you were sitting, you're facing towards the center and you can see the slideshows.

We did a nine minute slideshow for the final event, and then they judged that night. I did not win, but for me, it was a huge honor just to make it to the final. That's really cool.

Is there a link for that to still watch? Can I put that in the show notes? That'd be cool. If it's there, if it's still available. No, it's not gone.

I do have it. I do have a link for it, and it's password protected because I do not have the rights to the music. So I don't think I can put it out there publicly.

That's something that. Back to that question of things you want to do, looking to the future, I still really love the medium of slideshows and slideshow set to music, and I really would love to do One where I have the rights to the music so I can put it out there into the world. So I need to figure that out.

And music licensing is a little bit foreign to me, so if you or anyone listening wants to give me some advice on how to do that, I'm all ears. Please let me know. I'll just give it to you right now.

It's not going to be your mainstream music, and I think you could license mainstream music, the song or something. THere's ways to go about tHat. But I use, like, epidemic sound and art list to get different stuff, and you can go through it and find the mood you want or the genre that you're looking for, whether it's country or pop or rap or whatever, and basically pick the.

You can sample the music there, then you can license it. Tell them where you're going to try and use it. All right, I will look into that.

I dOn't know. I got to see what's available on there. Never looked at those before.

Sweet. I will also say last week there was a local community driven photo contest that I entered and I won. NICE.

That's cool. Which was a huge, I don't know, huge surprise to me. And I think really special, because so often I feel like outdoor sports photography, action sports photography, it doesn't get the time of day or it doesn't have the prestige of commercial photography and photojournalism and fashion photography.

Those are kind of the big three. And I truly believe that to go into outdoor sports photography, you have to have a good understanding of all of those genres of photography. So to have one of my photos voted amongst a huge range of photos as the winner, it was a contest called the One shot to rule them all, which was super cool.

And if you wanted to, I could expand on that more and how awesome it was for the creators to bring it to Salt Lake City and get our photo community together. But that was really special. That's cool and a huge honor.

Oh, that's awesome. Sweet. THAT'S WHAT I GOT.

Awesome. THANK YOU. Thanks again, Re.

Oh, before we close this up, where can people find your work? I'lL PUT THAT also in the show notes, but yeah, for those that are just listening and driving in their car. And we're like, well, sir, yeah, you can find some of it on my Instagram account, which is at Rewickstrom. I'll spell it if you want Rewikstrom.

And you can also find it at my website, which is rewickshamphoto.com. Sweet. Awesome.

Thanks, Re. Thank you. Big thank you to everyone that's made it this far into the episode.

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