Action sports photographer Emily Tidwell has captured some of the most powerful moments in skiing, snowboarding, and cycling. Once propelled by urgency and adrenaline, Tidwell is approaching her first Olympics with patience, focus, and protective intention.
By Hannah Truby
“Once you hit burnout, it never actually ends. You’re always kind of in recovery,” notes Emily Tidwell.
It’s Craft Night. Eight of us crowd around a cluster of tables at a bar in Reno. Every hand is busy, either with threads or beads or watercolor pencils. One person works methodically on a fly, winding wire, fur, and colorful feathers around a tiny hook, transforming it into a miniature work of art that seems too delicate to hold.
Tidwell was inspired to start the monthly get-togethers during a stretch when her own life felt defined by urgency and isolation. She found herself doing small, quiet things alone—making friendship bracelets, craving company but unsure how to ask for it.
“I kept hoping someone else would start something like this,” she says. “And eventually I was like, why don’t I?”
The action sports photographer has captured some of the most powerful moments in skiing, snowboarding, and cycling. It’s a career built on constant motion, where speed and urgency are rewarded. Urgency propelled Tidwell forward—but it came at a cost, leaving her depleted several years in.
Now, photographing the U.S. ski and snowboard team at the upcoming Winter Olympics feels like a culmination of a journey shaped as much by adrenaline and action as by patience and reflection. After years of pushing herself professionally, Tidwell now approaches work of this scale with a deliberate, protective mindset.
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Tidwell is also one of Mountain Gazette’s contributing photographers; explore her gallery from the ‘Bring the Thunder’ assignment in Mountain Gazette 204.
“People want me to be nervous or excited, but I’m feeling really neutral right now,” she says. “I think I’ll feel really excited once I get my Team USA gear, but when I used to get too excited, I let my expectations get too high and I’d spiral if it didn’t go exactly as planned. Burnout totally adjusted the way I had to think about events. My mantra lately is: "Let go or be dragged.”
Photographer Emily Tidwell. Photo by Ari Schneider.
Tidwell was 18 when she left Minnesota and made the move out west. She landed at Mount Hood, spending her early days photographing skiers like Sadie Carlson and Paula Collin at Timberline Lodge’s Fashion Week invitational—learning the rhythm of action and event photography in real time.
“I think that’s what got me hooked on it,” she says. “There’s this energy that comes off the athletes. You can feel their emotions from a million miles away, and you can feel it in the photos. I just love it.”
Talking with Tidwell now, it’s clear that while urgency once shaped her approach, emotion drives the work she’s making today.
Photos by Emily Tidwell.
“I tend to get an emotional attachment to my athletes. Getting engaged in their story–that makes my experience better. And there are certain events where you can't help but get attached, and just really excited for them–especially in the case of something like Rampage.”
For years, women in freeride mountain biking trained for Red Bull Rampage in everything but name—building lines, pushing terrain, preparing for an event they were never officially invited to ride. In the competition’s long history, women had never qualified for or competed at Rampage, the sport’s most consequential stage, until 2024, when they were finally included in the program. Tidwell was there to photograph that moment, documenting not just a competitive milestone but the quiet culmination of years of unseen preparation—proof that the riders had long been ready, even if the institution had only just caught on.
“Robin Gooms was the first person to send. She did two back flips, her sink was perfect, and I saw her go past me and it was like my photo was done and I just watched,” Tidwell recounts. “Things like that are just so special. It had taken so long for women to have that.”
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Robin Goomes won the first women’s Rampage with a run that included backflips and big drops, a milestone moment for women in big‑mountain freeride.
Photos by Emily Tidwell.
Over the years, the Olympics have become more than just a competition—they are a testament to human resilience and dedication. Watching, whether through photographs or on TV, we see elite athletes not as machines, but as humans who have worked and overcome so much. In that moment, we feel for them the tiny space between joy and struggle, exhilaration and fragility.
That instinctive tenderness toward emotion—so central to Tidwell’s work—will no doubt serve as a guiding strength for her at the upcoming 25th Winter Olympics.
After a beat, as Tidwell and I return to our respective crafts, she says, “Honestly, I like to blame it on getting a really good recommendation,” regarding her Olympic job. “Part of why I have such mixed emotions about this is that the Olympics were never on my radar. It never felt like a dream I was actively chasing. I was actually not a good photographer when I started. I was very bad at it. It took a lot of work to see myself get here. And that little girl in me looks up to myself now, and I get excited about that.”
Tidwell will be photographing the U.S. team in the alpine events—everything from the high-speed downhill to the technical giant slalom and Super-G. She’s also excited for the chance to capture some of the snowboarding big-air events, like the halfpipe. But her favorite moments to capture remain the quieter ones—the brief, unfolding beats between action and chaos.
“Those moments will never make it into the press bits or Forbes,” she says, “but they’re always my favorites.”
