Vail Chair Lift Photographer Suspended for Publishing Partially Nude Photo Goes on Offensive

Photographer Marty Odom took advantage of a fleeting photographic opportunity when he snapped the Vail chair lift photo of a man with his pants pulled down dangling by one ski from a malfunctioning chair lift at Blue Sky Basin. But Odom's publication of the Vail chair lift photo in the Vail Daily News, showing a 48 year old male skier's nude buttocks, cost him his job with SharpShooter Imaging. The partially nude photo hit the internet and spread like wildfire. News of the Vail chair lift photographer's suspension soon followed.

Vail Resorts hires SharpShooter Imaging to take on-mountain photography, encouraging skiers to "take home a lasting memory of your vacation." Apparently, photos documenting chair lift malfunctions that rip the clothes off its skiers and suspend them upside down, exposed, is not what Vail had in mind.

Director of Corporate Communications for Vail Resorts Kelly Ladyga denied pressuring SharpShooter Imaging to suspend Odom for publishing the now-infamous Vail chair lift photo, according to a report in the Rocky Mountain News. Ladyga said that the company informed her it had suspended Odom in accordance with company policy.

Although Odom may have overstepped bounds by publishing the Vail chair lift photo, skiers can hardly claim they have no fair warning that photographers may snap their photos. "Look for a SharpShooter Imaging Photographer at the top of every major chair lift," Vail Resorts' website proclaims, "and we will capture your vacation memories that will last a lifetime." Is this the epitome of irony? The man whose exposed buttocks were captured on film and distributed throughout the world as he helplessly awaited rescue is unlikely to forget his vacation experience in this lifetime and that one experience is likely the only one of its kind he will have.

Odom is apparently at odds with the resort and the company, challenging the fairness of his suspension on flickr. A post by Patrick Fletcher, said to be made on behalf of Odom and quoting Odom, notes that Odom was at the ski resort on his day off. The post contends that Odom's suspension is the result of a lawsuit filed against Vail Resorts by the embarrassed skier whose plight was memorialized in the Vail chair lift photo. The flickr commentary accompanying the photo reports that the liftie forgot to put the seat down and didn't even stop the chair once the mishap occurred. Odom says the chair was stopped by another skier in the lift line.

Sources: associatedcontent.com