Harro's Heroes

Harro’s Heroes is something very special for our 20th Birthday Season. Tony “Harro” Harrington is arguably Australia’s best ever ski photographer – Australia has been blessed with some awesome snow photographer talent over the past several decades, but for mine, with no disrespect to his contemporaries past and present, Harro stands alone as our best ever. He’s also no slouch in front of the lens either, is one of the World’s leading surf photographers (specialising in awe-inspiring, not to mention death-defying big wave action), and generally adds up to a cocktail mix of Crocodile Dundee, Steve Irwin and that bronzed Aussie tradie can-do-anything type of guy.
Except in Harro’s case, while handy at everything, he left being a tradie (sparky) to follow the snow and surf long ago. So for our 20th Anniversary Season we asked him to dig deep into his amazing archives to pull out some of his favourite/best skiers he shot with, the Aussies and Kiwis this issue, internationals next issue. He has been there, skied that, with an amazing collection of talent.

We first met Harro when he rocked up in a kombi van to our Belconnen office, as he was heading north after finishing another season at Thredbo, 23 years ago if memory serves. He was bursting with enthusiasm, ideas and energy, and already supplying some great shots for the long-since defunct ski magazine I was editing back then before starting SnowAction.
He was also scraping funds together to compete in the World Extreme Ski Championships in Alaska in 1994. From there he started sending back shots so good that they just demanded the front cover, featuring legends like Shane McConkey and Kent Kreitler skiing amazingly steep slopes, all bathed in the signature late afternoon AK sunset glow.
Flash forward to now and he’s still bursting with enthusiasm, ideas and energy, and still supplying great shots, never mind firing up an amazing new event downunder, the Buller X, and something very exciting in AK (details to be revealed).

These days he’s putting together huge budgets, and getting international recognition and support for his signature events.
Which is great, for his first World Heli Challenge he actually had to pay to truck snow down town for the Big Air part of that, held in the Wanaka Pub carpark. We ran that story in our launch issue (after getting VIP media treatment sleeping on his garage floor for the duration).
Check out Mitch Reeves, Andrea Binning, Anna Segal, Jono Brauer, Chris Booth, Sam Smoothy & Tony Mcutcheon this issue. Next issue’s internationals to be revealed. – Owain Price

For more of Harro’s work and buy prints etc go to www.harroart.com

For anyone heading to Mt Buller he is running the Photo Shop there this season too.

For the details and how to answer the Call Up for the Buller X event go to www.bullerx.com.au