Just Passing Thru follows Matt Walker and Tom Wallisch as they embark on a 1,783 mile journey throughout Western Europe. During their travels, these two individuals meet up with a variety of faces as they search for skiing in London, Manchester, Glasgow, and Barcelona.

Shot on the Canon 7D with 28-135mm kit lens.

Right now I’m in a photo class at the University of Colorado at Boulder focusing on “Fine Art Photography.” My professor (Albert Chong) asked the class to create a series of photos focusing on the subject of beauty.

For my project I asked a series of three people what they considered to be beautiful. However moving away from the typical ideal of beauty, I was looking for something that would be considered only beautiful to these specific individuals.

In addition, I chose to work with photo collage, making each image by placing together over 300 layers in Photoshop. Here’s what I came up with:

We have been editing our brains out over here, trying to get this first issue out the door. Enjoy our trailer, equipped with snippets of the imagery and action you can expect to see in Just Passing Thru 1.1. The broadcast episode will be available for free on our site in the near future. We will also be selling an affordable DVD version equipped with standard and extended versions. This DVD will be packed with bonus features from the trip as well as other skiing edits including all of the Jiberish Chapter edits from the past winter in high resolution. [Click Here] to shop for the DVD.

Featuring the riding of Tom Wallisch, Phil Casabon, Nick Martini, Mike Hornbeck, Matt Walker, Seamus Flanagan, Michael Clarke, Keri Herman, Adam Delorme, Corey Vanular, Liam Downey, Henrik Harlaut, TJ Schiller, Mike Henituk, Sammy Carlson, Justin Norman, Peter Olenick, Matt Margetts, and many others.

Shot on location in Denver, Breckenridge, Woodward at Copper, Moab, Park City, Ogden, Boise, Mt. Hood, Seattle, Whistler, and everywhere in between.

We just finished up shooting some interviews for the project. Unfortunately, Keri is home in Minnesota for the summer, so it was just Kimmel and I…

Our studio for the shoot was my basement, with an elegant Blake Kimmel design canvas backdrop. Despite the mom ‘n pop wood panel walls, it certainly did the trick.

The project is coming along great. Our original plan of releasing the series by the end of July, looks like it was rather farfetched. However, we’re shooting for the end of August by the latest. Its been rather difficult to balance school, life, and Just Passing Thru.

Here’s a view of the Just Passing Thru office, which also serves as my room. As you can see, we’re equipped with a brand new Mac Pro and other electronic trinkets. Also, our trailer should be ready in the near future, so check back at justpassingthru.tv to stay up-to-date with what’s going on in our neck of the woods…

After five horrendous weather days in Whistler, we awoke to an absolutely perfect day. No clouds to be seen, and only beautiful rays of sunshine. Unfortunately, despite the beautiful weather, we were scheduled to start our trek back home to Colorado. Packing up the Subaru, Ryann, Kerri and I jumped in, and started our lengthy drive home.  Since we had stayed longer in Whistler in hopes of some better weather, we decided to forgo our original plans of stopping in Yellowstone, and head right home. Keri started the first leg of the trip in a rather crowded back seat. She claimed that she was comfortable, doubt it… After dropping Ryann off at the Vancouver airport, we made our way towards the border, where we sat in a line of slowly moving cars for close to an hour and a half. If you’re looking for a scooter, give these guys a call… We made a short pit stop in Seattle to grab some delicious grub at the Seattle Center. Mostly we just wanted to check out the Space Needle one last time… After a quick lunch at the Grecian Corner, we jumped back in the car and kept rolling towards Colorado. The drive thru Eastern Washington was tedious at times. We took several unplanned detours and saw a whole lot of flat landscape. Construction seems to be a prominent theme throughout the entire Northwest during this time of year. We arrived in the Park City region just as the sun was coming up. Originally planning on sleeping a few hours there, we simply kept driving towards Colorado. After 31 hours straight in the Subaru, I had dropped Keri off in Breckenridge and finally made it home to Boulder. The first installment of Just Passing Thru ended after 4,000 miles of driving through five different states and one Canadian province. It was a great trip and we captured some excellent footage. I picked up a brand new Mac Pro from the Apple store today and am working on getting our 32 hours of footage compiled and organized. Stay tuned to justpassingthru.tv for B-Roll edits and info on when the final series will drop. We’re shooting to get ‘er done by the end of the month… Thanks for following our adventures at justpassingthru.tv, keep dropping by the site to stay up to date with what’s going on with Just Passing Thru…

After two days of rainy Whistler weather, the clouds finally broke, and some rays of sunshine began to peek through the mass of gloom overhead. We immediately made our way to the base of Blackcomb mountain, anticipating the lengthy journey to Horstman Glacier and the site of Momentum Ski Camps.

As we began to gather our gear, we quickly realized that Keri’s ski boots were no longer in the car. Apparently I had unloaded them back during our stay at Da Hood House, forgetting to put them back in the Subaru. We quickly resolved the problem with a trip to the Salomon store at the base of Whistler mountain.

Rental boots and all, we shlepped our gear up three ski lifts and one bus ride to reach the top of Blackcomb mountain.

Keri and Charlie, one of our videographers during our stay in Whistler, check out the menu for our next few days of skiing. During this time, we had the pleasure of skiing with the likes of Corey Vanular, Mike Riddle, Justin Dorey, TJ Schiller, Peter Olenick, Matt Margets, Joe Schuster, Mike Henituk, and many others. One highlight being Vanular stomping his first double flatspin ever.

Pro skier: TJ Schiller…

Heading down the lift after a fun day of skiing with Henituk. Just hanging loose in Whis…

Whistler village looms below.

On our walk back to the day lots, we stopped by the dirt track to watch some biking. Unfortunately we didn’t see any tail whips…

Ryann, my girlfriend, jumped on a plane and met us while we were passing through Whistler.

One of the challenges for a Momentum Ski Camp scavenger hunt was to get a kiss from Meg Olenick. Meg loves kissing little boys…

Check back at justpassingthru.tv for further updates on our adventure back to Colorado and other info associated with Just Passing Thru.

Looks like we’re about done with passing through the Mt. Hood area. It certainly has been quite the mixture of weather as we’ve experienced everything from sun, rain, wind, and fog. Our first two days started off great with sunshine and some great skiing.

Here I am just passing through the Timeberline parking lot en route to a lovely day of skiing. 

During our time here we skied with “bunch” pros. Here’s Mike Hornbeck ready to drop into the public park jump line.

The Flanagan family was on site with us for the week, making it happen on and off the slopes. Here are Seamus (age 12) and Paddy (age 10).

For the first part of our stay in the Hood area, we camped by the shores of Trillium Lake. Our neighbor, Jeff Java, was a professional musician and let us record a few tracks for our upcoming video release. 

Keri is so into mustaches…

Unfortunately, on the third day of our adventures in Hood, our stay at the shores of Trillium Lake were interrupted by severe rains. We awoke to a leaking tent and a messy campsite. After a two hour clean up, we found ourselves at home inside the Cozy Cabin Cafe in Welches, Oregon for a day off. It was the perfect place to be with free public wi-fi, delicious mac-n-cheese, and other wholesome comfort food.

We quickly bunked up with the Level 1 Productions crew where we spent much of our time at Da Hood House.

Level 1’s Kyle Decker goes through some shots with Phil Casabon, Mike Hornbeck, and Henrik Harlaut.

We also made a pleasant trip to Windell’s to do some skating in Bob, which is the indoor training facility at the camp. 

Henrik Harlaut skates the mini-ramp…

Mike Hornbeck drops ‘er down…

Kimmel and I get the shot of Level 1’s Freedle Coty. Notice the shotgun mic. I’m totally meant to be a grip… 

Bob is home to indoor trampolines, skate parks, and foam pits. All around it’s just a pretty darn good time. In case you’re wondering what that floating grey ball is around the middle of the frame, that’s Tom Wallisch. Yep, the actual Tom Wallisch. He can double flip, no big.

Tomorrow morning we take Kimmel to the Portland Airport so he can catch his flight to the LA Film Festival. There he will be doing some video work on the red carpet and dealing with “bunch” celebs. Keri and I head up to Bainbridge Island for the night en route to the Whistler area and some more skiing. Stay tuned to justpassingthru.tv for more info on the trip…