Shoot the sideshow. This is a tip I give to other photographers when they ask me for advice, and this photo is an example of a time when I shot the sideshow.

I was hiking in the mountains above the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, with my photographer friend Chris Collacott. It was winter, and it was cold. Very cold. The wind had a bite to it that would cause frostbite on exposed skin, and for that reason I was covered from head to toe in winter gear. It seemed to take forever for the sun to set, which was the moment I was waiting for in order to capture the warm lighting that only comes during sunrises or sunsets. But on this particular day, while standing on an exposed mountain top in the bitter freezing wind, the sunset seemed like it was taking an extra long time to happen.

I had my camera tripod set up beside Chris, and in order to stay warm, I decided to hike down off the peak for a minute and come back up again, just to try and get the blood moving in my seemingly frozen limbs. My crampons dug into the hard, crusted snow as I walked down off the peak, but when I turned around to start back up again I saw a scene that needed to be captured with my camera. Chris was wearing a red jacket that popped with color in front of the cloudy sky, and the scene to his left stretched on forever over the distant mountain tops. I hiked back up to the peak, picked up my camera and tripod, and hiked back down to my previous location. I yelled over the wind to Chris and asked him to look through his camera, then I shot a series of photos that I later stitched together into a high resolution VAST photo.

I did not climb the mountain on that day to take a photo of my friend, but on this day I shot the sideshow, which means to me that I photographed an unexpected opportunity that presented itself. I will never forget the cold of that evening in the wind on the mountain top, and this photo has captured that moment in time forever.