PHOTO: Justin “The Juice” Hostynek
RIDER: “J2” Jason Rasmus
SPOT: Echo Road Gap
LOCATION: South Lake Tahoe, California
CAMERA: Canon EOS 1 (analog)
Let’s talk about this photo of Jason “J2” Rasmus. Though the composition may look like chaos, by the end of this article, you will come to understand it is anything but. Like the man himself, the photo is a highly orchestrated circus of competing and complementary elements.
The location is Echo Summit, South Lake Tahoe, California. The year is 1995. J2 is floating a switch-backside 180 over a gargantuan road-gap. During a blizzard. Into a field of tightly grouped trees. Had this been any other rider, a broken femur certainly could have been the outcome. But the duo composing the photo was J2 and photographer Justin Hostynek. Perhaps never a greater odd couple to exist in the annals of shred history. One a loud, extroverted class clown with the gusto of a cannonball. The other a soft spoken, art-damaged introvert with the eye of the tiger.
Rather than capture the frame from below, Hostynek chose to compose the photo from above. He wanted to showcase not only the height of the gap and the distance of travel, but also the tiny spectators, the many trees in the landing zone, and the blizzard itself. If this were game day in Giants Stadium, J2 would be the football on its way through the goalposts.
In the early 1990s, Snowboarder Magazine ran a Bud Fawcett photo of Dave Seoane riding in a storm. According to Hostynek, this photo made a huge impression on him. “Fawcett purposely underexposed the emulsion to make the background dark and corrected the subject with his flash. I went on to emulate this style for many years; storm flash-photography became my favorite subject. Some athletes were down to experiment in this way, others were not. J2 was somewhere in between.”
Like many New Yorkers, J2 was a complainer. This was his way of pushing people’s buttons and getting a laugh. Even though he moaned a lot in the moment, according to Hostynek, “He always appreciated the final result, as did his peers.”
Of the many storm-flash photographs Hostynek has captured over the decades, this is his favorite image. As the legend goes, he was so confident in the uniqueness of this photo that when submitting it to Snowboarder Magazine for editorial consideration, he included a note saying they must either run it as a cover, or send it back. The note was not well received by the magazine’s publisher. Nonetheless, it did in fact become the cover of the 1995 Snowboarder Magazine Photo Annual; a validation of both Hostynek’s storm-flash obsession and J2’s Hail Mary approach to snowboarding.
Jason Rasmus was born and raised in the great state of New York, a land known better for its pizza than its pistes. Hostynek met Rasmus through the Burton rider Stevie Alters while visiting Vail, Colorado in the fall of 1993. “Twos had migrated from New York with some other east coast shredders,” says Hostynek, “Within a few months of our meeting, J2 became a rider for Twist Clothing; the apparel brand I co-owned with Amani King and the brothers Trent and Troy Bush.”
When Hostynek looks back on his approach to snowboarding in the early 90s, he readily acknowledges that making art of deep powder reigned supreme in his mind. Armed with a heavy camera bag and unwavering focus, he aimed to capture freeriding in the white room. He was not there just to see the sights and have fun. Rather, he was there to craft something unique and of lasting artistic value. The mountains, the riders, the cameras, and the ever-changing weather conditions were his tools.
This mind-set, coupled with his introverted nature, often caused Hostynek to come across as overly seriously to others. J2 wasn’t having any of it. Habitually and without mercy, he photobombed Hostynek’s photos. He made fun of Hostynek’s vibe. Moreover, he took joy in mocking Hostynek’s complicated hard-wired remote flashes that often did not work in soggy conditions. Despite knowing that these flash units were essential to capturing storm photography, he loved to complain about them at every opportunity, knowing that doing so would stress Hostynek out all the more.
“J2 was my good friend. He was the court jester. He knew how to lighten the mood, which was not part of my skill set in the 90s,” says Hostynek, “He somehow stayed in the flow by going against the grain. He brought color, laughter and fun to the mountains. For many years, whenever I went anywhere in the world to photograph snowboarding, nine times out of ten, J2 was the core figure in the crew. He kept us centered, even at his most wild. It is no accident that my favorite photo is of him.”