At its most base value, Crankworx is a mountain bike festival… and to many people, that’s all it is. After making action videos and taking fast-paced photos for about four years, I stumbled upon the magical world of mountain biking and instantly fell in love. What an epic use of the human body and some simple technology!

Photos © Dominic Hook

A solid regime of religiously watching all available seasons of Brandon Semenuk’s RedBull series Life Behind Bars followed and inspired me to pursue a career in action sports filmmaking and photography. This year the journey towards the dream materialised. I made a pact with myself to travel from Melbourne to Rotorua in March to see my idols like Semenuk, Brett Rheeder and Cam McCaul compete at the first stop of the Crankworx 2016 world tour.

Now don’t get me wrong… the Slopestyle was epic and insane to witness with my own eyes, I had a blast taking photos and capturing videos, as well as meeting the best of the best in Slopestyle. But… Crankworx Rotorua was much more to me than one day of competition; it was many, many things:

It was my first opportunity to experience another culture (although it was only a four-hour plane trip); it was my first time traveling away from home; it was my first chance to meet other creatives in the action sports industry; and it was also an eye-opener to all the other aspects of the MTB world I had been missing, not only the other disciplines of the sport, but the open and inclusive culture and kinship.

After gaining accreditation I planned to utilise a broad range of media, and attempted to capture both photos and videos, though not specifically trying to perfect either. So whilst I didn’t necessarily get the best quality I could, in this video I feel I have captured the essence of the event, with an almost raw feel. The journey, the location, the community, the action and adrenalin of such a brilliant event will live with me for a long time. Or at least until next year…

If you’d like to see an album of the photos I captured during the week, head here…

Thanks for sticking around and I hope this video gives you that epic feeling of ‘stoke’ that it gave me when filming, editing and watching it. Cheers!