Humorless Vail
January 7th, 2009Posted in Skiing Everywhere
Lots of skiers and nonskiers have gotten a chuckle from the now famous photograph of a skier at Vail dangling upside down, with his pants down, from a chairlift, a predicament which resulted form the chair seat not being down when he was loaded onto the lift. Happily, he was rescued after a few minutes and was not injured.
Marty Odom, the person who snapped the famous photograph was an off duty photographer for Sharpshooters, the company that has the on mountain photography concession at Vail. You know, the folks that take the pictures of the happy tourists and then sell them copies to take home. Since he was skiing on his own time and using his own camera when he got lucky to be in the right spot at the right time, he thought he’d make a few extra bucks and sold the photo to the Vail Daily. That decision has cost him his job. Sharpshooters fired him, citing a no-compete clause in his employment contract, which Mr. Odom had probably forgotten about or assumed applied to taking the standard tourist photos rather than news photos.
Mr. Odom thinks because the resort was displeased with the photo and its potential for bad publicity that he was fired. I’ll never know the truth about who or why he was fired, but isn’t this the kind of thing that millions of people watch America’s Funniest Homevideos for? Nobody was injured and it was a one in a gazillion type of accident so nobody is going to stop skiing at Vail for fear of a repeat. Shouldn’t Vail comp the hapless skier a free vacation and see that Mr. Odom gets rehired so he can keep shooting photos that reflect all aspects of our quirky sport? Vail’s name has been read millions more times this past week because of this photo than it otherwise would have been. Marketeers tell us that is a really good thing. Rehiring the photographer will get their name read millions more times again- in a more postive light. As it is now, Vail is looking like a humorless grouch. Who wants to go ski there and support that type of behavior?
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