The Snowboarder’s Journal Gary Land Gallerie

Shooters gonna shoot. And Gary Land is a shooter. He's an OG East Coast degenerate-turned-snowboard-photographer who eventually pivoted to high-profile photography and directing commercials for clients including Apple, Bose and Nike, including one that aired during the Super Bowl. So to get back to the sports metaphor and expand some: You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take.

Thing is, Gary isn't really into mainstream sports. He'll tell you he hates them. Ironically enough, he grew up in a house in Virginia Beach, VA, that was basically a sports bar. It was filled with wall-to-wall TVs broadcasting any and every game-of-the-day, all day, everyday. Baseball, basketball, hockey, horse races-all of it, all the time. Gary's dad was a bookie. As in someone who facilitates gambling. Like DraftKings.com, but a human, his da"He was a shady individual, but a good guy," Gary says.

There's lots of fodder for some psychoanalysis here, but setting that aside, let's just say Gary wasn't vibing on all those mainstream games. Instead he turned to skateboarding, surfing and, eventually,snowboarding. "I wanted to be my own man," Gary says. "And I didn't want every conversation to be about sports. My dad couldn't care less about skate- boarding, surfing, snowboarding, so thať's what I did." It was the late '70s, early '80s. Gary was a self-described "little de- linquent, breaking all the rules, breaking laws, getting into all kinds of shit." Example A: The story of how Gary got his first camera. Kid had more moxie than money, so he stole a gun from his old man, rolled down to the local pawn shop and swapped it straight up for a Minolta X- 700 with a motor drive. Now he could shoot skateboarding. Roll footage of young Gary walking in slow mo, new camera in hand, entourage of skate rats in tow. "I lived behind one of the first big skateparks; it was called Mt.Trashmore," Gary says. "I started taking pictures of my friends; they were on the verge of being pro skaters. The vert scene was super huge back then. There was a group of guys called the Windsor Woods Warriors. They were the early vert dudes that kind of ruled that scene.

That's where it started for me." Then one day a snowboard magazine landed in his local surf shop. It was called Eastern Edge and in an instant Gary was all in. At this point, he'd been shooting photos of his homies and selling some of the images to the local mags and was starting to see it as a possible meal ticket. When Gary gazed upon those first photos of snowboarders, he saw the radical beauty of skateboarding and surfing, but all of it set take against an entirely new backdrop. He knew that's where he wanted to take his photography, so he took his shot. "Long story short, I ended up calling the editor of Eastern Edge," Gary says. "I told him I wanted to move up north and take everything I'd learned shooting skateboarding and surfing and apply it to snowboarding. And that's what I did."Next stop: Killington, VT. Gary remembers maybe six or seven snowboarders riding there when he first showed up. They made fast friends and again Gary became the guy in the crew with the camera "I was literally shooting on the hill and learning to snowboard at same time," he says. "There weren't a lot of people shooting photos back then and everybody wanted to get a photo, so when l'd show up to a mountain, word would get out that I was shooting and pretty quickly it'd turn into a scene, and I’d be shooting everyone . People would literally flock to wherever we were." Gary rode the '90s snowboard industry boom into the early '00s. He was working for Eastern Edge and getting assignments from Trans World Snowboarding and Snowboarder on the side. He shot a lot. He refined his skills. "The '90s weren't the origins of snowboarding, but these guys I was shooting, they were the next generation," Gary says. "We were all basically crash test dummies, It was fun. Those were great times." Then as so often happens, responsibility crashed the party. Gary had a girlfriend who lived in Boston, and she got pregnant. Gary decided it would be best to move back to the big city to get a job that could support little baby Land. After a short stint at a now-defunct snowboard brand, he found work at Reebok as the overseer of their photo archive. As one of his first tasks he tagged along on a photo shoot, just to observe, take in the production, and see how Reebok ran things. Basketball star Allen Iverson was the subject. And, like any good photographer, Gary always has a camera in his pocket. So that day, while he watched the contracted photographer shoot, he took some shots too. He worked the natural light, captured Iverson on grainy black-and-white film and printed some selects and stuck them on his desk at work. One day, a Reebok exec saw his shots and decided they were way better than the others. The new plan: Gary's images would run as the campaign for Iverson.

"All of a sudden, the crew at Reebok was like, "Get Gary to shoot this, get Gary to shoot that," Gary says. "Then, next thing I know, Allen only wants to work with me. Pretty quickly I become a photographer for Reebok and I'm traveling all the time, shooting Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Rakim-all these hip-hop artists and pretty much every major football and basketball player you can imagine." Now Gary gets to shoot everything. Ironically, ball sports have become a big part of his business. Imagine how proud his Pops must be. He's in high demand and shooting campaigns for the biggest brands in the world. He also runs a production company. "It's pretty wild, really, I'm a high school dropout," Gary says. "Thinking about all the hurdles and obstacles that were in front of me-it's crazy where I ended up. But I just stuck to it and tried to do the best I could and also have fun. And I think it all kind of worked itself out." Gary's now rubbing elbows with the likes of LeBron James and Simone Biles, and directing commercials for Apple, Nike and NASCAR. But Gary is still a dirtbag snowboarder at heart. He's an avid board collector. He's in constant contact with industry heads and putting in a dozen-plus days of riding every winter. You can call him lifer. In fact, in the last couple of years he's actually gotten back out to shoot some snowboarding. He's done time with the Dustbox crew and all these years later he's still psyched to get in the trenches with the hungriest up-and-comers out there. It makes him really happy to seethat, fundamentally, snowboarding hasn't changed that much.

"Everything's pretty much the same as it was back then, only now, pot is legal," Gary says. Yes, Gary is nostalgic for the time he spent shooting snowboarding Who wouldn't be? He's about to publish a coffee-table book full of his imagery from that era. He started the @eaststreetarchives Instagram account while working on the book and he considers both the book and the feed to be his love letter to snowboarding. He'll be the first to admit his departure from the scene was bittersweet. He was excited to be a dad, but sad to leave his crew and the whole snowboard community. It felt like a family to him. "I remember shooting the US Open at Stratton [VT] and leaving there thinking. "Well, I guess that's it. I don't think I will get to shoot snowboarding ever again," Gary says. "I was super sad. It really felt like my life was over. Responsibility came knocking. I was going to be a dad and I was going to have some bullshit job that I hated. But it turned out things ended up quite the opposite." Gary took a lot of shots. He carried a camera that day on set with Allen Iverson. He packed up and moved to Killington not knowing a thing about snowboarding. He stole his dad's Smith & Wesson. He loves to shoot, so that's what he's done and continues to do. It's still fun for him and that's important, too."It's all about learning and having fun," Gary says. "You go out, you document something and then you move on and ask, "What's the next thing we can do?"

Words By Liam Gallagher