No mains power for days, so the whole kit list comes down to a weight and battery budget. The summit shot is never the story. Day three is, when the group stops performing for the camera and starts actually talking to each other.

Cold flattens batteries and flat light flattens everything else, so it is an early start or nothing. I follow the rider down rather than framing from the side of the piste, which means the viewer takes the line instead of watching it happen to somebody else.

Shot from inside the boat, not the bank. Mounts on the thwart, a camera in hand for the drop, and a backup of every card the same night. The scream on the big rapid happens once and you either have it or you do not.

Road days are long and mostly uneventful, which is exactly why the footage has to be earned. Helmet cam for the riding, handheld for the chai stops, and the edit lives on the stuff in between the two.

Trail filming is a staging problem. Walk the section first, pick the two corners worth the climb, then shoot the same feature from three positions so the edit has a cut in it instead of one long follow nobody finishes watching.

Water work means getting out there with the board. In the lineup for the take off, long lens from the sand for the set, and the whole thing planned around a tide and light window before anybody waxes anything.

The best thirty seconds of any event film are the ones after the finish, when everybody is filthy and nobody cares. You only get those if you ran the course too, which is the entire argument for hiring somebody who takes part.

Not every shoot needs to be an expedition. A single day out with a group gives you a hero cut, a stack of verticals and a set of stills, which for most operators is a month of posting from one afternoon.

Doing the event yourself changes where you point the camera. You know which kilometre hurts, so you are already standing there when somebody's face falls apart, instead of chasing it afterwards.