Photography has always been a huge part of sports media. From the earliest days of the Tour de France to last night’s must-see ballgame, the captured image has played a vital role in how stories are presented. Since launching Sportsnet magazine two years ago, we have strived to show you some of the best sports photographs in the world. The power, energy and emotion caught in photographs cannot be matched by any other medium.
I was recently honoured to be a judge of Red Bull Illume. The competition’s purpose is to showcase the most exciting and creative action-sports photography on the planet. This year a total of 28,257 images were submitted by 6,417 photographers from 124 countries. Having also judged the event in 2007 (the inaugural showcase), I was astounded by the quality—each of the 10 categories produced numerous possible winners. Thanks to the convergence of talent and technology, previously unthinkable images are being captured. And much like the sports they cover, these outstanding photographers are pushing the limits of what is possible.
—Myles McCutcheon,
Photo Editor, Sportsnet Magazine
Red Bull Illume is on tour with the one Canadian stop being lucky Vancouver. If you are in the hood the show is up nightly from sunset onwards starting January 31st and running through February 8th at the Jack Poole Plaza located within the Convention Center West. It’s a stunning show of photography as the images are set within 2×2 meter illuminated boxes. Exactly how great photography should be seen. 3-2-1 Go!
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “I was looking at my portfolio and thought I should shoot some different images—less ‘studio-lit,’ if you will. It had been a while since I’d shot skateboarding, but I decided to give it another try. After a short brainstorm session, my buddy Erik and I thought it would be a cool thing to try something less set up. We grabbed our boards and went to the street, just outside a forest a couple of kilometres from where I live. The position of the sun was just right. I quickly grabbed my camera. Skating the street from front to back a couple of times, I kept trying to get the right shot. After almost smashing my camera on the concrete, I thought I would give it just one last try—this is the last image I shot in that series. The camera I used was a Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a Canon 15 mm f/2.8 fish-eye lens. Because the 5D is a full-frame camera, the fish eye has a 180-degree angle of view. I used a shutter speed of 1/50 to get that nice motion blur of the street and a little of the background, as well as an F-stop of 16 to get as much in focus as possible.”
Illumination: Scott Serfas / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “This photo was taken on the second trip during the making of the Art of FLIGHT snowboarding film. We had been in Alaska for a month and I knew the trip was ending very soon. I really wanted to shoot a photo from the helicopter, right above Travis Rice as he was riding a line, but it was very difficult to coordinate because there was another helicopter in the air shooting with a Cineflex camera. We worked out that if our heli hovered above the line Travis was going to ride, then the other one could manoeuvre around us without a collision. So as Travis mentally prepared himself to ride the line, I rose up about 30 metres above him and waited. The other helicopter practised its move around us, making sure they could still get the shot they needed. The sun was setting fast, so the director called for Travis to drop into the line, and as he made his second turn down the mountain I snapped this shot. This turned out to be the last photo I took during what was the best snowboarding trip of my life!”
Energy: Romina Amato / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “It was not an easy day in ‘the office’ when I took this photo. I was covering the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series on the islet of Vila Franca do Campo in the Portuguese Azores from a boat. It was quite rough at the time and I was really happy that I had previous experience shooting on boats, so I knew I wouldn’t get seasick. You need to be fully concentrated on finding good angles when shooting in such high swells, speaking to the boat driver to hold positions while protecting your gear and somehow managing to hold on while still needing both hands to shoot. I saw this angle between the rocks but it was difficult for the boat driver to stay in position; it was a very narrow gap and just a little movement one way or the other was the difference between seeing or not seeing the diver at all. The skipper fought so I could see what was going on and anticipate when to hit the right position to get the shot before the diver disappeared behind the rocks. Eventually it all fell into place. I like pictures that leave the viewer questioning. In this case it’s: Where is that guy coming from? Will he survive this? Does he seriously think he can fly?”
Sequence: Zak Noyle / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “This wasn’t a large day by North Shore [of Oahu, Hawaii] standards but sort of a lay day. When the waves are smaller, the surfers usually go out for a surf right before the sun sets. I walked down the beach with my camera and a 70-200 mm lens—I didn’t take a tripod; it’s easier to hand-hold. I really love capturing the different elements of my surroundings, to be able to put the viewer of the image into the exact location of where I was and what I saw. By pulling the lens back, I was able to get the sand and sky, so it’s almost as if someone were walking down the beach and looking over to see Gabriel doing this massive backflip.”
New Creativity: Daniel Vojtěch / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “I had had this idea in my head for a long time: I wanted to do something similar to one of my older pictures with a snowboarder. For this new project, I chose four-cross rider Tomas Slavik. He’s a former Czech freestyle champion and sees the progress of freestyle tricks from a different perspective. He performs completely new and impossible tricks on his MTB—and if something seems impossible now, it will be the norm in a few years. This shoot took place in a studio because we could control all the lights easily and suspend the bike from the ceiling, and also to create that backstage feeling. We had one special rope for Tomas and two smaller ones for the bike. Because I always want the best quality, I chose a Nikon D800E with a Nikkor 24-70/2.8 lens. We also had seven Fomei Digital Pro X strobes and a super-cool gadget—a special flash remote control app for the iPad.”
Overall Winner and Playground category Winner: Lorenz Holder / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “I found this unique spot in the summer in Raisting, Germany, and I really wanted to shoot a snowboard picture there. I told Xaver Hoffmann about it and he was also fascinated. My idea to shoot in heavy snowfall wasn’t going to be easy. It only snowed once in this spot last season, so there was pretty much just a one-time chance to get this shot. I used two big Elinchrom strobes in the background to light up the snowflakes and create a ‘white wall’ where I could capture Xaver’s silhouette as he jumped. To illuminate the dish, I chose a four-second exposure time to get some light from the moon. Overall, I’m pretty happy that we made it there that day!”
Experimental: Lorenz Holder / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “In the past couple of years I’ve been shooting 90 percent of my action shots from a tripod because I messed up the framing of my pictures too many times shooting by hand. After a session, I always end up with the same picture, with only minor changes when I flip through them. Pictures with riders, pictures without them and everything else that happened in the scene when I triggered the camera. As I had used a tripod so many times, I found out that I could flip different pictures in Photoshop and put them together again to create a totally different, new world that doesn’t exist in real life. All the pictures have perfect symmetry and that’s something I like a lot. In this picture, I mirrored parts of the building to get a really, really big building. Jordan, in the front, is the only element that is not symmetrical.”
Lifestyle: Morgan Maassen / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “Late one fall I gathered a group of America’s next generation of young surfers and headed to Fiji to try our hand at an impressive south swell. Arriving at Cloudbreak to perfect conditions and an empty beach, we had an absolute blast. The young surfers handled the size and intensity of the menacing reef-break well and we truly had an amazing trip of waves and weather. The kids—Jake Marshall, Taylor Clark, Frankie Harrer, Colt Ward, Thelen McKinna-Worrell, Nolan Rapoza and Dryden Brown; all young stand-outs with promising futures—surfed for 10 hours a day, coming in only for food or sunscreen. For this shot, I captured them one morning in the crystal-clear water, chatting about anything from the surf they were enjoying to homework they forgot. Reflecting on the trip after we had gone our separate ways, it wasn’t the performance of the surfers or the calibre of surf that made our adventure memorable, it was their social dynamic. I was fascinated by their camaraderie in the intense surf, and realized that while the atmosphere was thick with competition, their friendship had them trading waves with nothing but smiles, laughing and hollering at each other’s successes and misfortune with pure glee.”
Wings: Samo Vidic / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “This image shows Jorge Ferzuli from Mexico diving from a 26.8-metre platform during training for the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series at Lake Vouliagmeni in Athens. My task was to capture all the action from the water. I was shooting with a Canon EOS 1D Mark IV with a Canon 15-mm fish-eye lens placed in an SPL water housing. I usually try to get different styles of photos from the water and here I was lucky enough to capture a bird flying next to Jorge Ferzuli. It is very difficult to shoot from the water, as you’re very limited with the angles. Later, when I showed this photo to other people, everybody was really impressed—I actually won the Slovenian Press Photo Award with this shot.”
Spirit: Chris Burkard / Red Bull Illume
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER: “We woke at dawn to what appeared to be clear skies and we immediately scrambled to get our things together. Windows of clear blue skies are rare in this part of Norway and each minute that passed as we gathered our boards and wetsuits seemed twice as long. Jumping into the truck, we drove the icy roads looking for peaks on the horizon. Then just over the frozen hillside the top of a wave could be seen. Our excitement grew as we saw its mist. We were so focused on the waves ahead of us, we failed to see the looming clouds behind them. We ran to the shoreline and paddled straight out. We thought it would be a long session of the best arctic waves any of us had ever scored. But suddenly the winds changed and those looming clouds on the horizon snuck up. The rain began to pour and within minutes it began to snow. Now caught in a blizzard, we struggled to paddle in and, finally making it back to the truck, we took shelter and tried to wait out the storm. Weather is constantly changing in the Arctic and sometimes all it takes is a little patience. On this day, the weather got the best of us and our time spent sitting in the truck ended up being our downfall. The snow had piled high around us and soon it was pretty clear that our truck was not going anywhere fast. Dane and Keith knew another surf session was nowhere in sight and decided to head back into town. As the storm continued to brew, the pair made their way back home.”
