Trevor Graves

Trevor Graves is a pioneering snowboard photographer and the CEO of Nemo Design, a brand design agency in Portland, Oregon. The agency celebrates a creative stream of mixed talents and non-traditional backgrounds, working with sports, technology, and lifestyle brands such as Nike, MasterCraft boats, Smith Optics, and IKON Pass. Here are some tales from his journey.

As a kid, we lived in Syracuse, New York, where that part of the country is under snow for three or four months out of the year. In college, I met Scott Clum, one of the kids in the fine arts program, and we worked together. This black and white photo shown here set the stage for the rest of my career as a photographer. We shot this in October 1985 and finished processing the film by 3 am. This picture came out so well that we sent it to Tom Sims at Sims Snowboards in Santa Barbara, California.

Taken in a farmer’s field, you don’t see there’s a barbed wire fence behind me to hold the cows in. That fall, snow came in early. We had to wait for the wind to blow and push the snow into a cornice. And then we made it into a ramp, basically made a quarter pipe out of it, and then made sure not to fall because you would wreck the pipe.

Scott had to nail it pretty quickly, and you could see the tracks in the background where he was packing the snow down to get speed. He’s wearing a wetsuit, as he didn’t want his butt to get wet. Also, Sorel boots, as they did not have the modern snowboarding equipment yet. Once we snapped this shot, I knew if I could get more of these skateboard-style pictures, it would be a big hit for California publications.

Today, we’re based in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been here since 1990, and our three kids are grown adults with their own career paths. My daughter, Aidan, works with me at Nemo Design, and it’s been awesome. She is a blessing in disguise. I’m very proud of the fact that in my career as a creative, Nemo has done about 9 figures over the 25 years we have been in business. We have ridden the high and lows and are still a solvent business today.

I also sit on the board of directors at the Wy’East Academy, a boarding school based outside of Portland, Oregon, near Mount Hood. We call it alternative education. It’s a high school that has professional Olympic coaches to help student-athletes with their designated sports. They concentrate on mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, and skateboarding. Students have experienced teachers and tutors who will travel with them to events nationwide, if not worldwide. This way, you’re around a group of kids who are like-minded, on adventures, and learning from the road.