Words Colin Clancy Photos Greg Von Doersten commercial airliner touches down on a runway in Nairobi, Kenya and taxis to a stop. Greg Von Doersten emerges from the plane, camera in hand, and rushes around to chat up the gate manager. Soon he’s in the cargo hold of their Democratic Republic of Congo-bound flight, shooting photos of kayaks and gear being loaded. This is Von Doersten’s way: Getting into places no one thought were even a possibility—and getting the shot. “Nobody can get away with that, and Von Doersten’s there in the underbelly of the airplane getting amazing photo-graphs,” says pro kayaker, Tyler Bradt, who traveled with Von Doersten in 2011 to run the highest-volume rapids on the planet. “He could have just as easily kicked back and gone along for the ride.” As a kid growing up in Ohio, Von Doersten (known af-fectionately as “GVD” to everyone who’s met him) obsessed about stories of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expeditions to Ant-arctica. For his whole adult life, he’s been telling stories of his own expeditions to exotic and treacherous destinations to far-flung corners of the globe. GVD views his photography as something more than just creating great images. For him, it’s about telling great stories. Von Doersten rattles off names and dates and mountain ranges from Iran to Alaska with encyclopedic knowledge. He recalls meetings he had with photo editors 30 years before and in the same breath talks of future expeditions. This mile-a-minute mentality is indicative of scrappiness that’s led to a prolific career not only spanning the globe, but also running the gamut of mountain sports and adventure travel. focused on outdoor skills like climbing, hiking and horseman-ship, pressuring his dad to let him go. On that trip, he fell in love with both Jackson Hole and life in the mountains. After spending four summers there as a camper and racking up an impressive number of nontechnical peaks, Von Doersten became one of the youngest students admitted to the NOLS advanced mountaineering course at 13 years old. He climbed many of the highest peaks in the Tetons and the Wind River Range, graduating to more challenging routes through his teens. While he took a point-and-shoot camera along with him on many of these trips, it wasn’t until college that his interest in photography really took hold. At the University of Montana, he studied forestry and recreation management with eyes on becoming a career river or mountain guide. He also took some black-and-white photography classes. He says he inherited artistic flair from his mother, Gigi, who often worked with watercolors and oil paints. From early on she showed Von Doersten the value of creativity and the basic artistic instincts that went on to help his photography—paying attention to light and mood, story-telling through the placement of objects within a frame, and attention to detail. For his initial big foreign trip, a NOLS course in Africa, Von Doersten received his first SLR camera as a gift. In Africa, he met photographer and writer Ted Kerasote, who inspired the young adventurer. From there, Von Doersten began teaching himself how to shoot. THE VON DOERSTEN first set foot in the Tetons as a 10-year-old kid in the 1970s. Though his father, “Big Ed,” had pointed GVD toward conventional sports, his sights had long been set on the mountains of the West. When he heard about Teton Valley Ranch Camp, a summer camp in Jackson, WY, he Greg Von Doersten Gallerie 083
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 2: Page 83
