Shaun White, Beyond The Medals | A pre-Social Media personal project from Adam Moran
Believe it or not once a time existed before every photo and video had to be immediately uploaded to social media. It was during these ancient times that photographer Adam Moran had unrestrained access to Shaun White as he travelled the world winning medals, playing music, and having all the good times. It was recently selected as A Photo Editor‘s ‘Personal Project’ to check out.
Entitled ‘Beyond The Medals‘ it offers a glimpse of an unguarded Shaun White in his hey day. What a time to be alive!
“What made these photos possible and special to me was that there was a huge trust between us, and it was a pre social media world. Myspace existed, but Facebook was only at colleges, and Instagram still far away so whatever we shot never felt rushed or needed to be posted immediately. Shaun could always see what I shot, and he liked that someone was there to shoot all the fun and behind the scenes moments. We never shot with the goal of getting likes, it was just to document, and we laughed a lot along the way. I quickly learned that everything needed to be shot on small cameras like a Leica, or point and shoots as to not create a scene around a celebrity. That also that allowed me to sneak in moments that people weren’t realizing. The goal was to shoot what was real, and never make it feel like a photoshoot. At times we created moments, but it was always out of fun.
It was a crazy time for Shaun, he went from being a 19 year old famous in action sports, to a globally recognized celebrity everywhere we went. I saw the ups and down sides of fame, but also got to be a fly on the wall documenting it with no specific end goal. We spent a little over 3 years together, traveling the world non stop, and many of these shots just piled up as we went along. I was there at events, press conferences, photo shoots, test driving cars, buying houses, etc, all the time snapping away. Not until recently did I go back through the archives and pull this all together to find some of my favorites. As I look back, it was an experience worthy of two lifetimes, and I’m glad there was no Facebook or Instagram around to have felt compelled to post on.”
Click over to A PHOTO EDITOR to check out Adam Moran’s Beyond The Medals personal photography project on Shaun White.
Follow BOARD RAP on Insta for more updates.
