SKIING/SNOWBOARDING

Behind The Cover – 19.1: Rene Rinnekangas in Finland

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After dropping the first of our five covers from issue one, we are dropping Rene Rinnekangas (2/5) today alongside the Behind the Cover story with photographer Tatu Toivanen. Enjoy below, and check back for the rest of the covers releasing soon! 

When did you pick up a camera? School or self taught? 

While filming for 292 movies somewhere around 2014-2015, we never really had photographer around, so I bought a camera just to document what we were doing. Wasn’t thinking too much about it, but ended up enjoying and getting interested in it quite a lot. Things have been just developing pretty naturally after that. 

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You photograph anything else besides snowboarding? 

I’ve been shooting skateboarding and just experimenting a lot with it for fun.

First cover? 

Yep. Never crossed my mind that this photo would make it’s way to cover of a mag!

Thank you guys for this opportunity!  Means a lot to to us. Big respect to everyone who has helped and supported us during the years.

How did you guys find the spot? 

It was our third filming trip last spring, and we headed to eastern Finland to hit one spot that we knew would work, and to check one really cool looking location we’d found from Google. We got the first spot done and we went on a mission to find the one from google, but when we got there, a local lady told us the spot was taken down just one year before. We had already driven a couple hours to the middle of nowhere so we decided to keep searching those areas and ended up using several days just driving from village to village hoping to find something worthy but without success. Our Friend Roope (Rautiainen) hinted us this cool looking school in one of those villages and we went to have look. It was not quite what we were looking for, but it was interesting enough to give it a go and I think everyone of us were just over sitting in a car and keeping the hopes high of finding the “one”. To make it work on footage, we had to make a ramp down the roof for Anton, so we did. Sneaking some plywood from the construction site next to the spot and couple nails to hold it together and we were good to go.

What did you shoot it with and why? 

This was shot on old Nikkor fisheye 16mm with an external flash. I got a bunch of old Nikon lenses and I use them all depending on situation. I like that you can switch lenses between analog and digital bodies without any adaptors. 

Pretty sick to get (filmer) Anton on the cover as well! How’s he feeling? 

Hahah that’s amazing that he’s there. It kind of makes the cover also about the thing we do than just about Rene and that’s a big compliment. He’s stoked!

How long you guys been working with Rene? How did you meet? 

We’ve been boarding and filming with Rene for around ten years. We had this 292crew going when we were a bit younger. In the beginning it was Anton, Rene’s brother Riko, a bunch of other friends and Rene, who was just about 12 years old or something when he started to film street with them. I hopped in couple years later. We all were just snowboarding and trying to get videoparts filmed. Years went and people started to focus on other things in life but we kind of stayed and continued filming. Rene started to get more recognition and was really motivated to progress and film. We did our first project together with Rene and Anton in 2018.  First it was filming video parts for Method Mag’s movie, III, and then Snowboarder mag’s Everybody, Everybody after that the Real Snow project and then we got the change to make our own short movie Sugared which was released last fall. 

After the success of Sugared, what project you workin on this year? 

We are working on a new snowboarding movie, that will come out in Fall ’23.  We started filming last spring and will continue to film the whole upcoming season. Main focus will be around Rene and his ability to snowboard pretty much everything. This time with more friends involved and more exotic locations. Also going to make something nice out of the photos. 

Favorite memory of riding with Rene? 

It’s always the best. Probably those spring laps at Riksgränsen when we leave the camera bags at home and just go and enojy the amazing terrain. 

Keep an eye out for more from Rene and the crew this winter! 

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