Follow cams were used in snowboarding long before Spencer Whiting built a name for himself (and a really fun career) with the pairing. But the guy the internet knows as Gimbal God certainly has a knack for doing it like no one else.
On one hand, he charges just as hard as the elite athletes he points his camera at. That puts Whiting in a unique position to come away with footage of some incredible lines. But his creativity and drive to see those lines through unique angles are really what put those clips in a world of their own. Action cameras, of course, are an essential tool for him. Whiting told The Inertia in 2022 that a gimbal, a camera, and other equipment would have added up to a lot of unnecessary costs when he first started filming. His Go Pro, however, unlocked all of the creative ideas he had, and in a more accessible package.
“The filming career started by accident, really,” he told The Inertia’s Joe Carberry back in 2022, explaining how he and a friend had agreed to start a snowboarding web series where they would take turns filming one another. “It kinda turned into this thing where he started getting so good at snowboarding, I just started filming a little bit more.”
Whiting was hired to film professionally soon after and, as he said, “it kinda all snowballed from there.”
While the video above focuses specifically on Whiting testing a new Hero 13 camera, watching him put a new camera through its paces is an interesting look into his creative process. From breaking down the technical aspects of his filmmaking to planning out runs with his friends, this can be fuel for anybody out there willing to go down a creative road and see where it takes them.
