Gallerie

Matt Roebke Would Rather Be Shooting

During a 2026 trip to Hokkaido, Japan, for a yet-to-be-named film, just about everyone passed us in our tiny Japanese rental van.
During a 2026 trip to Hokkaido, Japan, for a yet-to-be-named film, just about everyone passed us in our tiny Japanese rental van. Packed with four people and too much gear, we were lucky to hit 30 mph. In the middle of nowhere, though, we came across a set of taillights buried in a snowbank. Within 30 minutes we got our taxi homie dug out and headed back to Otaru.
Words Lily Krass Ritter. Photos and Captions Matt Roebke

When Matt Roebke was 10 years old, he would run around his family’s backyard in Marysville, WA, snapping photos of trees and bugs and whatever else caught his eye with his mom’s Canon AE-1. His mom, a passionate hobby photographer, eventually asked him if he wanted her to put some film in the camera so he could actually see some photos. “I wasn’t even shooting photos, I just loved the sound of that shutter,” he says, laughing. “I was just happy to be out there.” Two decades later, that’s the same mentality the 30-year-old Bellingham, WA-based photographer has maintained: unconditional excitement for being outside with a camera.

Throughout middle and high school, Roebke spent as much time as he could skiing—and snowboarding for a few years—up at Stevens Pass. On a trip to British Columbia in seventh grade, Roebke saw a photo of Jess Kimura hitting a street spot on the cover of Snowboard Canada. “I just remember thinking, ‘Whoa, people are shooting this kind of stuff?’” he says. “That was a really clarifying moment for the direction I wanted to go.”

For his high school senior project, Roebke and his friends shot and edited a short film of themselves skiing Stevens. Mobbing around the hill with his crew, shooting each other on features and side hits, was the epitome of fun. “That was when I realized that I liked shooting photos in between the filming more than the video work,” he says.

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