Dorion Johnson, a lad from Vineyard Haven, went sledding at the Tashmoo Overlook late last winter, hoping to catch a few last runs before the snows melted into spring. The magazine gave Dorion a disposable camera and asked him to shoot a roll at the close of one of the snowiest winters Martha’s Vineyard has ever had. It’s evident from many of the shots he took that the thrill of racing downhill can’t be beat – the more kids piled on top of a tube, for instance, the better.

Dorion liked to stand back from the action and shoot itty-bitty figures on vast, white landscapes. He also favored shots from astern, showing
riders as they whistled down toward the crusty, plowed margins between snowy hill and clear road – the  last, best hope of a braking sledder before a potentially gruesome end. Dorion did not get pictures of anything like that.

Nevertheless, many of Dorion’s action shots were fine, and some approached superb. The framing was excellent, the subjects wonderfully blurry. Only trouble was, his mitten sometimes got in the way of the lens, so you see only about half of what you’d really like to see. (We can tell you this with some certainty, however: the mitten was blue.)