Behind the Lens: Kelsey Toevs

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Behind the Lens is a series that shifts focus from who’s in front of the camera to who’s behind it. So often, creatives in the outdoor industry are the only reason any of us know what we know about our favorite athletes - but they rarely get the spotlight shined back on them.

This series is for those folks, the ones rigging, staging and capturing the shot. You know the one: maybe it hung on your wall as a kid, maybe it inspired you to try something or travel somewhere you hadn’t before, or maybe it was the representation you needed to envision yourself in this sport… It’s the shot that made you feel something when you saw it.

What photographer or videographer got that shot for you? Tell us about them here! We’d love to feature them.

Kelsey Toevs is a North Vancouver-based filmmaker and photographer, who, in 2023, won the Crankworx Dirt Diaries video competition with her submission “ Ready or Not ,” featuring rider Steve Vanderhoek - who also happens to be her husband. “A lot of couples have their hobbies and activities that they do together,” Kelsey laughs. “This is ours.”

Kelsey and Steve met when they were teenagers, which makes the fact that they can still live, work, and play together without adverse effect that much more impressive. Kelsey says their success is a question of balance: “Obviously there’s times where you’re having to just get things done for companies, or the motivation is low, or you’re frustrated with one another because one person wants a specific product and the other wants something different. But we get to spend so much time together doing really cool things, so I can’t complain in the slightest. It’s a mix of fun and a mix of work, and even on the hard days, it's a dream come true that we get to do this together.”

Kelsey got her start, like many aspiring photographers, in a high school darkroom. “I took a photo class and loved it. I just never put the thought into doing it as a career, because everyone I knew who was a photographer by trade, it was all weddings - and I knew from the get go that was just not something that interested me.”

Instead, she focused on having fun: she got a camcorder - the original “Dad cam” if you will - and then a GoPro and started filming edits of things like snowboarding trips with friends - and of Steve. “We were kids,” Kelsey says. “But I always had a camera.”

But as fate would have it, Kelsey says she ended up taking the plunge, and turned her hobby into her profession in 2014, when she found a reliable client in the real estate industry. “I fully dove into doing photo and video for work. I started my own business because I couldn't find a job that I liked, but I didn't want to go back to school again. So I just kind of made it a career and luckily it worked out. I’ve never looked back.”

Hand in hand with her new career, says Kelsey, came new camera gear, and with it, a renewed energy for filming with Steve. “We stopped for a really long time, but as soon as I got more equipment, Steve got back into really pushing his bike, and it evolved into this, now.”

“This,” being the translation of Kelsey’s proficiency behind the lens into sponsorships for Steve, which brought even more opportunities for filming together, like their most recent project, a short released in July called “ Slightly Above Below Averag e,” which documents Steve’s first trip to bike in southern Utah.

“Steve’s been wanting to go down ever since he was a kid; he’s been watching Rampage since it started. I went down in 2021 for Formation , for Pinkbike, and got to experience what that was like - and it’s just so completely different when you’re actually down there, versus what you watch on TV. I came back and was like ‘It’s so cool. You have to go.’”

Momentum built as Steve talked to friends, then sponsors, about getting a trip going, and then funded, and eventually, and at long last, Steve was in red rock country. “His mind was blown, he was so excited. The highlight for me was just watching him getting to ride all the lines and having a good crew of people to show us around. Steve was just having a friggin blast.”

Kelsey admits that biking has always been more Steve’s passion than hers - “I do it because it gets me outside and hanging with friends and Steve, but it’s not a love of mine” - which has its pros and cons. On the one hand, she doesn’t feel the desire to ride what she’s filming. I’m happy to not be on my bike and I’m 100% focused on my filming, so my mind isn’t torn in two ways.” On the other? Kelsey says sometimes, because she’s not as versed in or experienced at mountain biking, she might wonder about what moment in a trick will be the best to capture or what moment a rider might feel is the best in their performance.

“But then that’s when Steve comes into play,” Kelsey says, circling back to the unique and symbiotic relationship she has with her partner. “He can actually edit over my shoulder, can say ‘Oh, I really liked when you cut this clip with this clip, and this meshes well with this.’” Kelsey says that this combination of their individual skills - hers behind the lens and his on two wheels - are what make their films so successful.

Kelsey acknowledges that caring so deeply about her subject can come with pitfalls. “I had a little bit of a freakout when we first got down there,” Kelsey says of their recent shoot in Utah. “I sort of knew what Steve was hoping to do, but then we’re hiking up to the top of an old Rampage site and he’s looking at lines and I’m realizing ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were planning on doing that!’ Most of the time I fully trust him with his ability to judge his skill level and make it out alive, but because it’s so exposed out there it was really kind of freaking me out, thinking, ‘One little slip, and he’s tumbling down the whole valley and it’s not going to be good.’”

Kelsey says that she felt better once she was done scoping and back to filming: “If I was to just be standing there, having no purpose, I don’t think I’d enjoy it, but because I’m really focused on my job, it takes a lot of the worry out of it. Occasionally I’ll have to stabilize some shots if I’m doing handheld because I’m shaking, or I’ll have to take out the audio because I’m breathing so aggressively,” she laughs. “But for the most part, I’m pretty steady on it because I have my own task at hand, and it’s to capture the shot, which does distract me in a sense.”

Kelsey also acknowledges that for many couples who work together, it can be a challenge to not bring the personal into the professional and vice versa. “It can be really demanding,” she allows, but says that she at Steve make a point to stay focused on the good. “We get to spend good, quality time together, even if it’s under the umbrella of work, and we’re in the mountain bike world, which is not the worst thing,” Kelsey smiles. “We always say, we'll keep doing this together until it stops being fun, and when it stops being fun, then we'll slowly slink into the background and keep it all as a hobby instead of a job.”

For now, however, the pair are still very much enjoying their work, and have several projects already in the pipeline, including one, fittingly, about what it's like to work together to make bike moves as a wife and husband duo. And Kelsey remains grateful that she gets to do what she loves for work, and for the mentorship that has helped get her to where she is today, though she does admit she’d love to see more women get into filmmaking.

“Just get out there and start shooting,” she offers as advice to anyone considering the field. “Make it fun and surround yourself with like-minded people. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or reach out to anyone you look up to, because most of the time, they will be more than willing to help or share knowledge.”

To learn more about Kelsey, and to watch more of her shorts and films, you can find her on Instagram.

Related: Beyond the Ride: Annijke Wade