Around the same time, Smith’s older brother Garrett, who had gone to school for photojournalism, traded Drew one of his older cameras for a climbing rope. He encour-aged Smith to start shooting more regularly and got him to start a blog to share his travels. He named the blog “Drew’s Plan,” an irreverent response to an ex-girlfriend who had told him, “I just wish you had a plan.” “Garrett knew I was going to all these cool places and he’d call me every week and ask me what I was shooting and critique it,” he says. “He’d guilt trip me if I wasn’t taking photos, so I started taking my camera everywhere.” The perpetual cycle of work and travel continued, now with a pointed focus on circuiting the classic climbing desti-nations—Red River Gorge, Joshua Tree, Indian Creek, Red Rocks, El Potrero Chico in Mexico, and of course, Yosemite. For two seasons in 2015-2016, Smith worked on Yosem-ite’s search and rescue team, where he expanded both his mountain skills and his network. Yosemite has always been a crucible for the world’s best climbers, and being in the right place all the time had its advantages. When he wasn’t rescuing stranded tourists or injured climbers, he was often dangling on a rope, camera in hand. “It was so easy to stay motivated to shoot, just surrounded by the climbing lifestyle and these amazing climbs,” he says. Soon, Smith was firmly established as one of the Valley’s modern documentarians, uniquely capturing the culture, antics and achievements of climbing’s center of the universe. He shot speed records on El Capitan, difficult first ascents by visiting pros, and the daily comings and goings of Yosemite’s die-hard locals. Patagonia in particular took notice of his unique eye and ability to snap both high-angle action and the quirky side of the dirtbag life. He began selling photos here and there, the latest fleece jackets or stretchy pants a subtle footnote in otherwise authentic moments. “I thought eventually this will work out if I just stick with it—I think that’s how a lot of things are in life,” he admits. Since then, he’s been not only a photographer, but also an integral team member on climbing and skiing expeditions to Peru, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Alaska, Baffin Island, Patagonia and beyond. He’s had images published in Alpinist, Climb-ing and other notable magazines, done brand work for The North Face, Patagonia, Black Diamond and Roark among others, and shot with some of the world’s most talented mountain athletes, including Brette Harrington, Jackson Marvell, Christina Lusti and the late Hillaree Nelson. He gets the shot, but he also breaks trail, hauls his share of the gear and leads his pitches, often while carrying 20-plus pounds of camera equipment. Smith can capture the action with the best of them— deep pow turns, a surfer tucked into a glassy barrel, a heroic lunge for the finishing handhold 2,000 feet off the deck. But his work really shines in his uncanny ability to capture those fleeting yet precious moments of pause and contemplation. An apprehensive glance up at an imposing bit of climbing. A careful gaze down into the abyss from atop a big wall or a steep ski line. The view through a dusty, cracked windshield at a stretch of sunset-soaked dirt road. Utter exhaustion and the slow drag on a hand-rolled cigarette after days spent on the sharp end or in the no-fall zone. But pursuing and documenting climbing, skiing and alpinism comes with inherent risks, both physical and emo-tional. Being entrenched in these communities, Smith is no stranger to loss. A tragic number of partners, subjects and friends have perished to their passions, their spirits and best days enshrined by the click of his shutter. “Over the past few years I’ve been conscious of observ-ing and studying my subjects more deeply than I used to, and trying to capture those subtleties,” he says. “I’ve lost so many friends and people I know, that I guess I just want to preserve those things.” Perhaps it’s this collective burden, a kind of vocational patina, that in part gives Smith’s photography its signature grit. Over the last few years, he’s incorporated and mastered the use of shadow in his work—not so much a creeping dark-ness, but an allusion to the intrinsic duality that anyone who has lived the life knows all too well. Still, it’s joy that triumphs in his photos—a joke over tailgate beers, the innocent grin of a kid recently missing a tooth, the elation of questing into the unknown and coming out the other side with a story to tell. Smith’s photography is friendly mischief and perfect conditions, immortalizing a moment into something recog-nizable, relatable and truly beautiful. The kind of moments you wish you could taste again if you’ve lived them, and wish you’d done something different with your life if you haven’t. The best of these moments are fleeting, almost intangible and difficult to land. Often, they’re the answer to a question: “Who knows what’s gonna happen?” 086 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 17, Issue 4: Page 86
