I was born and raised in Northern Ireland and first discovered photography at the age of 16 after I took a few photos with a camera from my friend’s dad. I never had the money to buy a camera of my own until I turned 19. As soon as that happened, I was terminally hooked.

I was attracted to the immediacy of photography, I was always good at art and painted a bit at school, but found the painting process too slow. I've always been a collector of things: records, books, magazines – so taking photos is sort of an extension of this.

Being from a hardcore BMX/punk background myself, I began to shoot photographs of friends in the different scenes that I was involved with and made regular contributions to DIG BMX Magazine who are based in Belfast. The mag has a passion for stylistic BMX riding alongside a D.I.Y. punk ethic, so I could really tune into the magazine’s vision. These days, I’m the staff photographer, editor and janitor at their office in Belfast.

I'm lucky enough to be able to travel the world with fellow weirdos, documenting the many unique aspects of BMX life. What I’ve learned is that if you have a real passion for photography or anything else, follow your heart and believe in what you do. It’s 2010, let's keep the energy going. It's all about what's happening today, now.

I'm a Spanish photographer based in Barcelona. I’ve been passionate about photography since I was a child. Photography has always been one of my main hobbies, the other being skateboarding.

In 2005, I managed to link both of my passions and became a professional photographer, shooting advertisements for brands such as Red Bull, Volcom, Quiksilver, Carhartt, Wesc, Rusty, Braun and Nike as well as skate magazines.

I believe that my work brings something different to skateboard photography because I focus on photography composition, techniques and lighting rather than on skate tricks.

Today, I consider myself not only a skate photographer, but I am also developing more cinematic photography because it has infinite possibilities.

A snowflake addiction led me astray from the route my education should have taken me. While studying Environmental Engineering, I got my first reflex camera to share photo-moments I liked. I started capturing what I was in love with: snow, ski and nature. The first publications came out and, once I got my master's in engineering, I searched for a job in photography.

A few months later, I accepted a part-time job as a photo editor and photographer at the most read daily newspaper in the French part of Switzerland (20 Minutes). Due to the format, we couldn’t print the most artistic pictures, but we received and compiled fresh, new photos from all over the world, which was something I could be passionate about.

Besides that, I also work as a freelance photographer for clients, shooting commercials and editorial work. A lot of them are for the action sport industry, but my horizons are also always being broadened through this experience. From artists' portraits and journalistic reports to fashion shoots, there is always a fresh challenge. The following motto guides my style: “Less is more.” My eye is minimalistic and is constantly searching for a different point of view. Innovation, emotion and joy are what I'm looking for in any photo.

I was born in 1974. I received my first camera from my dad in 1993 and started taking a lot of portraits and concert pictures. After trying to have a ‘normal life’ working at the electronic department of a supermarket, I blew a fuse and took off one morning, deciding it was time to leave France.

During a long stay in New York, I spent my time skating and learning the basics of skateboard photography. In 1996-97 I started contributing to a Swiss skateboard magazine, Flat Mégazine. Since then, my photos have been published in many European magazines.

In 1999, I officially became team photographer for éS, Etnies and Emerica in Europe. I've also been working on some advertising campaigns for brands such as Sir Benny Miles, Element skateboards, Carhartt, and others.

I now live in Strasbourg, where I focus on printing and experimenting with different techniques and processes. I'm very interested in vintage cameras and old processes such as collodion wet plates. I also collect old family photos and union cases.

A few years ago I started a series of exhibitions featuring a retrospective of my work over the past ten years. More recently, I finished a show with the series "Through the backseat window." Soon, I’m collaborating with Jelle Keppens consisting of strictly medium format analog skateboard photography.

Everything began with a letter I sent to a ‘small’ motorcycle magazine when I was 18. I wanted to show to some motocross pictures to someone, and they called me in to see my work. After that I started working freelance.

For seven years I also worked in the world motorcycle road racing championship, traveling all around the world. I then started shooting for car and bike magazines and became a photographer for motorcycle brands.

I'm based in Milan, but I work everywhere. I love traveling and trying to find new locations and atmospheres in different countries. My job is a combination of my two big passions: motorcycles and photography. I believe motorcycles create one of the most spectacular and dynamic sports in the world. I still find it unbelievable sometimes what you can create and capture with a camera in your hands!

Originally from Montreal, I took up skiing at the age of 13 which in time became a catalyst for a life in pursuit of adventure. I became interested in photography while in high school and studied it more seriously in college. In the early 80's I took on a job as a whitewater rafting guide and in 1986 moved west to Whistler where my life as an action sports photographer began to fall into place.

My first job in Whistler was shooting video for the resort. During days off I would take photos of friends skiing and snowboarding. Eventually I tried submitting snowboard images to magazines and was subsequently hired as a Senior Photographer for Transworld Snowboarding. A position I held for a decade. Eventually I left the magazine in order to broaden my horizons and now contribute to publications worldwide. I also work as a marketing photographer for WhistlerBlackcomb resort.

I was born in New York in 1957 and started surfing in 1970 at the age of 13. in the last two years of high school, all I could think about was graduating and moving to Hawaii. In 1975 I did just that, and so at age 17 I was living in paradise. Since then I've never looked back. When I was 21 I decided that I would be a surf photographer, but it still took a near death collision with a reef to get me off my surfboard and behind the camera.

It has now been 30 years of surfing and photography for me, and what a long, strange trip it has been. Lots of crazy people, lots of exotic places. Not much money, but a fantastic life. I have been lucky enough to see – and in a small way be a part of – the evolution of the sport of surfing. i have seen surfing champions come and go and i have visited and photographed places that were once unknown and have seen them become world famous hot spots.

I have seen technology change the way a wave is ridden and I have watched the pictures I used to draw on my notebook of surfers riding giant waves become a reality. My goal is to try to keep taking the viewer to places they have not visited and to see things unlike anything they have seen before. I work for Transworld Surf in the USA and Volcom clothing, and contribute to most surfing publications outside of America.

I pray that I continue to see the beauty in what God has created and be able to continue to spread that beauty with my own vision. Thank God for this fantastic world.

Growing up in the Los Angeles area in the ‘90s, I was strongly influenced by the skateboard, music and graffiti culture that surrounded me. I wasn’t good at skateboarding, I couldn’t play an instrument, nor could I draw a stick figure if I tried. It was my passion for the culture and people I grew up with that inspired me.

I developed an interest in videography early on, documenting skateboard sessions in old town Pomona and trips to the Embarcadero in San Francisco, but it wasn’t until the age of 18 that I discovered my passion for photography.

During a semester abroad in Salamanca, Spain, I walked into a camera shop and bought my first camera: a 35mm film SLR. During my four-month stay I had the opportunity to photograph some of the most well known landmarks in Europe. Traveling opened my eyes to a world of possibilities and the potential that can be revealed through my lens.

After returning to California, I attended Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. During this time, I developed my techniques in lighting, composition, and portraiture, further enhancing my personal style. Now based in Los Angeles, I work as a freelance commercial and editorial photographer.

Being at the right place at the right time – and then doing the right thing in the right moment, that’s the name of the game for every photographer! A native Austrian living in Switzerland for the past two decades, I became a photo professional about six years ago.

I am a climbing enthusiast and natural networker, knowing literally everyone in the climbing scene, which has given me the chance to shoot the world’s best rock and ice climbers. However, I apply the same kind of passion to shooting other extreme sports such as BASE jumping, freeriding, speed flying or whitewater kayaking.

Originally, I started out as a painter, but even before my time as a professional, I regularly shot assignments for popular outdoor brands such as ODLO, Mammut, Black Diamond and Red Bull, to name a few. When doing shoots for them, I always try to put less spectacular activities such as hiking, running or golfing into perfect focus. One of my skiing shots was awarded “Best Mountain Adventure Photo” at the Banff Mountain Photography Competition and I was a finalist of the 2010 Red Bull Illume contest.

What I like most about my job is being outside, as well as the variety, traveling and being in contact with many extraordinary people. My road to success as a professional photographer was long and difficult and in the past I didn’t even think I would ever be able to make a living from photography. But obviously I was at the right place at the right time – and did the right thing often enough!

I mostly find inspiration from light. I’ve never been that attracted to flash or contrived set-up type photos. Not that I don’t find them intriguing, but I’m more interested in working with natural light and reacting to real life situations.

When I was young, I used to look at national geographic Magazine, wonder how the photos were made and ask myself: who are these lucky people that get to go and experience these cool things? That fueled a passion that fortunately turned into a job around 1998 when I began to work with Bike Magazine. To accommodate my newfound direction, I moved to British Columbia, Canada. Finding my way to the mountains after growing up in the prairies, I found a place that fits me and my lifestyle, which now includes life with my young family.

My photography took a turn four years ago when I began to co-create the film life Cycles. Merging my experience in photography and my business partners’ background in film, we set out to create a different kind of action sports film. The future of photography meshing with cinematography is an interesting merge of mediums and I hope to explore the balance of the two more.

I’ve tried to live my life by making the best decision at a particular moment, without worrying about the future. Choosing a path without looking at the final destination may not be ideal, but it hasn’t let me down yet. The high and mighty plateau I’ve been living on has had me working for the one magazine I subscribed to as a kid – Ride BMX.

Oddly enough, it was my writing and web knowledge that got me hired almost 14 years ago. But when I was handed a camera bag and subjected to a crash course from a couple of the best photographers in BMX, a spark of some sort went off. In a short time, my job transitioned into what it is today. I love my job, the magazine, and feel emotionally attached to it. I owe my salad days, or years, to that publication and I remind myself often to be thankful of where I am and who I have around me.

I’d like to say I don’t take anything seriously, including photography, but the truth is I’m quite critical—in fits, at least. I go months without shooting a good photo, and other times I feel like I’m on an infallible streak. My photography is based around, and caters for BMX.

On a photo shoot, I usually have to work with an athlete who has a trick and a very ‘I’m doing it right now’ attitude. My role at that point is to do the best with what I’m given and then attempt to capture the odd places, weird people, and wild scenarios that happen in between. I’m here for a good time, not a long time, but maybe a photo I’ve taken will be.

My passion for photography began when I was 19 years old. After attending photography school until 1996, I worked as an assistant with several fashion photographers in Munich and New York City. I branched out on my own in 1998, working mainly as a fashion and portrait photographer. In the years after I began shooting more and more image brochures and catalogues for sport clothing companies, as well as extreme sports.

I worked in locations from Barbados to Bombay, from studios to submarines. In between, I enjoy living in quiet Munich with my family. Ever since I began working in photography, my aim has been the same: to create what I consider visual value by combining a concept within a picture with an authentic atmospheric moment.

I was dropped onto earth in 1973 in Munich. I grew up doing a lot of outdoor sports in the mountains and lakes, including snowboarding, windsurfing, surfing and skateboarding. These sports inspired me most, so I always wanted to shoot them as I had a feeling for them. I’ve always known what the adrenaline rush is like.

I got my first film camera when I was 14 and used my dad’s SLR until I could afford my own. I learned photography by just working in my photo lab, analyzing the good and bad results. Photography has always been my passion, but I studied medicine for three years. I got bored with that and wanted to do something creative instead. i then began shooting for advertising agencies and magazines, and decided to study Media Design and informatics so that I could get ready for digital life.

I like to work closely with athletes, and try to find out what they see – adding creativity and energy to my photos. I’m fascinated by being able to freeze a single moment in one image because it gives me my drive. I never like to miss a good shot. Whatever it takes, wherever I can find a better angle, I just go for it. if it’s worth it, I’ll risk it – no matter if I have to run, jump, climb or swim to get the picture. Photography is my love, a drug, my spirit.

Born in Finland in 1979, I developed my passion for photography as a young boy, observing street and nature photos my mother took in addition to her painting. While I never really knew how to hold a paintbrush the right way, a camera seemed to fit in my hand just fine!

My interest in photography led me to study photojournalism at the University of Tampere. Only a few years later, in 2006 when working at Aamulehti newspaper, I was awarded Young Photo Journalist of the Year in Finland.

My previous life as a snowboarder allowed me to live a dream life of travelling the world for the coming years, following some of the world’s best snowboarders of that time. Today, I still continue this journey for the sheer joy of it all.

I have a unique ‘documentary’ approach towards new challenges. Whether documenting or creating, I am always looking for true feelings and uncompromising images. My sense of moment and true devotion to the story have led to the publication of my images in numerous international magazines such as TWS, Outside, Snowboarder or Flag, and alongside the logos of such renowned clients as Nokia, Finnair, Flow and Billabong to name but a few.

If it wasn’t for my camera, I would love to work as a curator. Or I would be found simply enjoying a summer day on a boat with my wife and two children.

I’ve spent most of the last seven years of my life living out of the back of a car, surfing couches, at base camps, in dusty camp grounds in not-so-glamorous hotel rooms.

Fifteen years ago, right after picking up my first camera, I wrote in my journal that I was "perpetually stoked, penniless and loving every minute of it". I’m 35 now, I have a few more grey hairs, but if you distill it down not much has changed. I love the mountains, I love the energy of the city, I love meeting passionate people and I love capturing a story in a single photograph.

I’ve shot commercially on six continents in over thirty countries. Some of my clients include Ram, Mitsubishi, Land Rover, Chevy, The North Face, Columbia Sportswear, and Phase One. In addition to my photography work, I created a film production company called Camp4 Collective in 2010 to better share the stories from the far corners of the globe that we so often find ourselves in.

I don't think there ever was a time I didn't have a camera in my hand. I have always been intrigued with capturing an image and saving it to look back on. As a kid I remember walking up to wild buffalo on vacation in Wyoming with a disposable camera just to get a picture.

Throughout high school I took photo classes and it wasn't until I finished my first year of college without taking a photo class that I realized photography was my passion and what I love to do the most. I’m currently finishing my BA in photography at Columbia College in Chicago and am pursuing another passion of mine at the same time: surfing. I love to be outdoors photographing in natural light, living in the moment and capturing it as best as I can.

Over the past few years my work has been published with Transworld Surf Magazine, ESM, Hardcore Magazine, ESPN, Surfline, and many other media outlets. In the summer of 2008 I started an online magazine called Great Lakes surfer. I felt the Great Lakes surfing community needed a place to be recognized and appreciated – a place to bring us all together and share what we love to do. The freshwater surf scene seems to be growing and I hope to ride this wave as long as I can.

I’m 29 years old and since I can remember my life has been connected to mountains and traveling. I became interested in photography a couple of years ago. I bought my first good camera in 2007 and initially I wasn’t really ambitious, treating the activity just as a great hobby and a springboard from my profession.

But things went in a different direction. Together with my friends I went climbing in the Tatra Mountains and took some photographs of their achievements. The photos turned out to be interesting for prestigious polish outdoor magazines. Since then I’ve looked at photography in a different way, I’ve learnt and experimented. Now, I’m a regular contributor to mountain magazines in Poland and Czech republic.

I try to combine traveling with photography. I try to show everyday life as well as the uniqueness of that part of the world. My trip last year to Tian-Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan taught me a lot in terms of photography and in terms of life itself. At the beginning of 2010 I became a member of the photographic agency ‘Babel images’, which focuses on presenting social problems and respecting human rights. I am also now an ambassador for Clik Elite.

I was born and raised in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany and now live in Düsseldorf. My story of being a photographer matches those of many other guys sharing my passion. I’ve been addicted to skate and snowboarding most of my life. Through my job I’ve had the chance to meet and contact many different photographers who have inspired me greatly.

Growing older, I had to face the negative aspects of these sports and with my health in mind I decided to become more professional behind the camera. Pushing the trigger doesn’t hurt at all – at least most of the time.

So I started to take photos back in 2008 with a digital SLR and I’m gaining more and more experience with the analogue medium format and 35mm cameras. It’s so much fun to go out with friends and all the other guys I meet to see new spots, nice places and then to capture my point of view with the camera. That’s what I like.

In 2012 I became a freelance photographer mainly focused on action sports, as well as many other fields. I’m working as a senior photographer and editor in chief at the German BMX Rider Magazine and I’m a member of the staff pro team at f-stop Gear.

I am a professional photographer based on the West coast of Canada. Born and raised in the small town of Tofino, B.C., I have been shooting outdoor life, coastal culture and action sports since my teens.

I believe I have a strongly individual style and an affinity for working in cold and challenging environments – the backcountry surf breaks of Vancouver Island and the zero-degree waters of Nova Scotia among them.

I am currently working as the photo editor of SBC Surf and my work has appeared in most of the world's major surf magazines. My other clients include Ocean Minded, ESPN and Patagonia.

Some years ago I moved from Germany, where I grew up, to Arlberg in the Austrian mountains. During this time I began shooting snowboarding action photography with friends. What could be more stunning than to work outside in nature with some good buddies, having a good time in the snow? I decided I liked the idea of turning my photography hobby into a serious job.

Since 2005 I've been shooting professionally, specializing in action sports photography. With sports photography, I love to catch the right moment and put the action in a smooth frame to show the spirit and passion of the sport.

I travel around the world for various shoots and since July 2010 I have been a member of the SanDisk Extreme Team. I have worked for numerous international magazines and clients, including Blue Tomato, Adidas and Burton snowboards.

I had no intentions of being a photographer – it just happened. I fell into it in 1992. Photography became my way to express the way I see people, our environment and the way we move through it. As a Florida native, I’ve always surrounded myself with water sports and the outdoors. My passions collided and I found myself drawn to shooting those sports and the people that make them what they are. Wakeboarding and wakeskating have played a major role in my career with its large presence throughout Florida, and I now get to shoot for various magazines worldwide and for clients such as Nike and Oakley.

I’ve had the fortune of traveling around the world with my camera. It’s been a lesson that can’t be taught, only experienced. Today, I continue to shoot action sports and have signed on with Nike to work exclusively with their Nike 6.0 division to photograph their surf, BMX, snowboard, ski, wakeboard and motocross teams. The opportunity has opened many doors and allowed me to expand my style of shooting into many other arenas.

Photography is a sickness; it can consume your time, wallet and even your outlook on the most simplistic things about life. Leaving the camera at home becomes impractical and answering the voice in your head, “that would make a great picture” is compulsive. it’s those times when I can answer, “it did” that make it all worth it.

My name is Miguel Angel Lopez Virgen and I'm from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. It was through another of my passions – skateboarding that I started taking pictures. I have never studied in a school of photography, but it’s thanks to skateboarding, my family and friends who supported me, and a love of learning new things that I’m here.

I have been a photographer for 15 years and have spent most of this time dedicated to the promotion of skateboarding in my country. I have learned many things, traveled and met amazing people. I have also given some non-profit workshops in my community. Photography has changed me as a person and I now see the world from another perspective.

Currently I continue with my personal photography projects and try to keep learning and experimenting with it. I've become so passionate about photography that I never leave the camera at home!

I hope to continue bringing different things to people and learn from everything that photography can offer. My motto remains the same - when you take a picture, feel the picture, live the picture and do not think too much about the picture.

I am 38 years old, born and raised in Switzerland and living in the beautiful Swiss Alps with my wife Anne and daughter Meryll. I started photography by printing my pictures in the darkroom (my parents' bathroom) at night then delivering the photos the next morning to a local newspaper.

Fifteen years later and step-by-step from local to international clients, I have made my way as a professional photographer working for different media such as Bike Germany, Powder and Bike USA, 7 sky (Switzerland), The new York Times and other international brands. I have skied since I was four years old and I started mountain biking 22 years ago, so logically I shoot these two sports the most. I love to ride my bike for myself or go skiing in the backcountry with my friends.

Now I travel around the world more and more but I still like to discover and shoot in the swiss Alps, which is my favorite studio on earth. The magic of outdoor photography is that you don’t know the word ‘routine’ and for 15 years i never felt like it is ‘work’. i think that my main task as a photographer is to try to share a moment, an emotion and information. When you achieve these three things you can say, “i have a good picture.”

I'm 23 years old and my hometown is Como, Italy. I have been a self-taught freelance sports photographer for six years. My passion for pictures began during my early teens when I used my father’s Olympus OM2 for the first time.

At the end of my school studies I followed freestyle motocross thanks to film friends, travelling around the world to USA, Japan, South Africa and throughout Europe. I got to know the sport very well, the people in it, and I got to co-operate with many different magazines. Then I began to diversify by shooting BMX, wakeboarding, skateboarding, jet skiing and snowboarding in many different countries. Now I’m collaborating with brands such as ESPN, etnies and FIAT.

I’m always looking to find a unique shot, configuring it in my mind to achieve exclusive, never- seen-before pictures for advertising or magazines. To me a picture is always a portrait that expresses my sensations.

I’m a self-taught french director and photographer, with the focus of my work being mostly around skateboarding. My graphical and geometrical photography is almost exclusively shot in black and white, and focuses more on the aesthetics and style of the sport, rather than the performance, while also playing around a lot with architecture.

Spending so much time out in the streets, I keep a curious eye for other interesting things of life happening, and am always ready to capture those unique moments. My pictures are a feast of lines and angles, and my specific compositions – blending the skateboarders into their environment – make this skateboarding photography accessible to non-skateboarders.

This is the third time my work has been recognized by Red Bull Illume. In total I’ve had seven finalist images in the 2007 and 2010 contests. My first retrospective book was published in the fall of 2016.

I’ve been surfing my whole life and photography has been a means to live and express my passion in a different way. I was born in Tahiti and grew up surfing with people like Manoa Drollet, Hira Teriinatoofa and WCT battler Michel Bourez.  One day, I came across a few photoblogs on the Internet, which I fell in love with. From then on, I just had to get into photography.

I’m also an IT specialist and web developer, so I created my own photoblog and website in 2005. In less than five years, my work has been featured in many leading surf magazines and in advertising. My photos have also been exhibited and were also chosen to represent Tahiti at the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010.

My goal is to show the world how beautiful the ocean is, which is why I mostly take shots of empty waves. I love being alone in the middle of nowhere, capturing those magical, beautiful moments with my camera that disappear in a second. I like being there, enjoying the waves’ sweetness, just feeling the 'Hau Maru' as we say in Tahitian – that ‘sweet atmosphere’. By just discovering the water world, I think it helps you to discover yourself.

I started to take pictures in 1995 as a hobby with an old Nikon F1. The surfing, the ocean and the wildlife of Costa Rica made me move here some years ago from my native Argentina.

Then I started taking pictures as a way of life. I've always been very motivated towards extreme sports and activities – being a photographer allowed me to intertwine both as a way to make a living.

During my career as a photographer I have always been drawn to try new things, concepts, ideas and different techniques. Playing with light and motion, pushing my ideas with an open mind has always been my dream and it is now turning into reality.

I grew up around Rotterdam, a city that today is known as one of the better places to ride street BMX in. Thirteen years ago when I started riding BMX I could have never imagined that I'd be living in London now, travelling all over, working with the coolest people I've ever met. I also wouldn't have guessed that I'd be shooting photos of the people I saw in magazines back then. It's been quite an interesting journey when I think of it now.

The difference between riding bikes and photography isn't all that big, I think. Even when shooting all the other sports, you meet the same kind of determination, and the same amount of fun.

I taught myself photography at the age of 21 when I injured my knee and was immobilized for a year – this way I could still keep up with my passion for BMX. This was also directly related to my studies in design and widened my set of skills.

I was soon drawn to brilliant pictures from people like Manu Sanz or Jeff Zielinski, which I saw regularly in magazines. By luck, photos from my very first films were published in core magazines too.

Little by little, I got the chance to travel all around the world, especially to the States where BMX was born. Since then, I have mixed with the best riders and worked for companies such as Vans and Carhartt. I now also run a website called TheDiggest.

I was born in 1985 in Vorarlberg, Austria. When I turned 18 I bought my first SLR camera and fell in love with photography from then on. I started by shooting snowboarding and freeskiing with my friends. After a while I realized that photography was more than just a hobby; I started spending all the money I earned from selling photos on buying new camera equipment, and my photography became more and more experimental.

Nowadays, I’m working for different companies, crews and magazines all over the globe. I’ve shot for Adidas, Oakley and Atomic and many more. A photographer has to learn different styles and show variety in their work, so it was good for me to also get into commercial and industrial photography to help me develop. In 2009, I also finished a master’s degree in photography.

Photography gave me the opportunity to travel and experience different cultures, but also the chance to show others the world through my eyes. But it was my passion for freeskiing and snowboarding that gave me the spark to begin shooting.

I’m 37 and I live on the northern braces of Sydney in a place called Newport. I was first introduced to surfing when I was around seven. I remember being at a BBQ and there was this old beat up surfboard lying under the house - I was fascinated by it. I ended being given it by one of my mother’s friends and my father cleaned it up and fixed it. I used to hassle my parents almost every day to take me to the beach so I could ride it.

I also became interested in photography at a young age. I used to steal my uncle’s camera when he wasn't using it and play with it. I never even knew if there was film in it so I’d push all the buttons and wait for the click, wondering if it was working or not.

I took up surfing professionally for a while. I did fairly well in a few surfing competitions, travelled a lot, beat a few names that I now shoot from time to time. But I got injured, so I bought a proper camera when I was 21 and then moved to Sydney to focus on my photography. I then assisted Adam Watson, one of Australia’s finest fashion and beauty photographers.

I initially wanted to shoot fashion but the 'surf photo thing' slowly took over and I haven’t stopped since then. It's an exciting time to own a camera. At the moment, I just love what I’m doing and that’s all that matters.

Shooting surfing was never the plan. I grew up in Pennsylvania, 70 miles from the coast of New Jersey, and went to college to become a vet. Now I'm 24, a graduate of Brooks institute, and making my living shooting freelance action sports of everything from surfing to fashion.

It's funny where life takes you and I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be. The ocean and the creative people around me inspire me, and I wake up every morning feeling blessed to be able to live the life I live. Current and past clients of mine include surfing, surfer, and surf Europe magazines, Surfline, and GQ.

Innovation keeps me determined, traveling to new places keeps me excited, and creating successful images from mere ideas keeps me looking forward to what tomorrow will bring.

It is something to do with nature, light and people that inspires me to shoot photos of freesports. I grew up in Scotland and have worked as a freelance photographer for the past five years since graduating in Theatre Design at St. Martins in London. As a snow sports photographer, I chased winters for four years before having my first summer in Wanaka, New Zealand, which is where I am now based.

There is not one sport in particular I crave to shoot, it is the act of a human using our landscape to play on that I find inspiring – be it sliding on snow, biking down exposed ridges or jumping off 1000-meter cliffs. Beautiful things happen when people and mountains meet.

I think my theatre background occasionally shows its face in my work. Capturing the performances of athletes in their element is critical. A photo must tell a story and inspire you to look deeper wondering how this moment in time came about.

The sports that I shoot take me to incredible parts of the world. My job allows me to travel to places I could never have dreamed of, meeting inspiring, passionate and like-minded people. I can go on adventures that can be both extremely challenging and daunting, but equally as rewarding. I never plan to stop this search.

I was born on august 11th, 1978, which is also Hulk Hogan’s birthday – but that’s about as far as the similarities between him and me go. In 1992 I found my big love: snowboarding. That was pretty much a life changing experience, however, somehow the worst snowboarder in the crew always gets the camera, and so my second love found me. On my birthday, one week after I bought my first real canon in 2001, I had an accident which took me off my board for nine very long months. At the time it was a nightmare, but to cut a long story short: I couldn’t be happier with how everything has turned out.

Since 2001 I have documented snowboarding everywhere from the Alps, the Rockies and the Andes. I am senior-photographer at Pleasure Magazine, and work with clients such as Red Bull, Vans, eleven and Snowboard Mag. Nowadays, I live in Zurich, Switzerland, and I am pretty much into portrait, fashion and action photography in general. But whenever it's good outside, I go and get the goods or shred snow as if I am a 15-year-old kid again.

I get inspired a lot during my assisting-work by city-trips; riding my bike through the city, watching magazines, movies, looking at people, thinking, nature, beautiful things, girls... everything!

I was fascinated by photography at an early age, which meant my mum had to pay good money to develop films of dubious worth! I bought my first new camera at 14 and in the years that followed I got a taste of working for a newspaper, studio, shooting weddings and portraits. As a result I knew I preferred the editorial, photojournalistic style of work.

I like carrying a small kit and not worrying about lots of gear slowing me down. When I’m working my mindset is to try and give an inside perspective of any sport or event I cover and tell a story, particularly the personal human element. I’m not a big fan of preconceived ideas. Rather I enjoy the challenge and buzz of just turning up to shoot a different sport or event, regardless of the location or conditions, and adapting.

I’ve been working as a photographer for nearly 30 years now and in that time I’ve been really fortunate that it’s introduced me to some amazing colleagues, taught me about journalistic integrity, shown me the world, from shooting Olympic Games to international rugby amidst a crowded stadium, to a lonely skateboarder trying to nail a kick-flip or kids playing football in a slum.

I’m thrilled to have been working for some fantastic clients, including international news agency AFP, Getty Images and Red Bull, and proud to have been recognised and awarded in such photo competitions as Picture of the Year International, Red Bull Illume and NZ Press Photographer of the Year.

Led by my passion for whitewater, I have been paddling and photographing rivers around the world for the last 20 years. Over the past few years, I have begun to pursue my interest in wildlife and conservation photography, working near my home in Portland, Oregon, as well as in China, Bhutan, and the Arctic. A deep interest in East Asia and a proficiency in Mandarin has led me on repeated adventures in Western China and the Great Himalayan ranges.

The late Galen Rowell and his work documenting alpine expeditions inspire me, and I strive to bring some of that vision to the kayaking world. This fall I will be back in Asia shooting kayaking in Bhutan and a float trip in Tibet. My work for the foreseeable future will largely focus on threatened areas, cultures, and wildlife in the greater Himalayan ranges. My clients have included National Geographic, Outside, Patagonia, and Kayak Session.

I grew up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico. Born from a tattoo artist and an artisan consignment shop owner, I never did quite fit in with the normal crowd. Let’s just say, the other kids’ parents didn’t seem to appreciate art like we did.

I moved to Alta in 1995 to follow my childhood passion of skiing powder snow. I ended up getting on the snowmaking crew, which to this day has been my favorite job. I got to roll around in the mountains all night and watch the most amazing sunrises.

After that first year I bought an old Minolta camera with a blazing four frames per second shutter from a buddy and started shooting my friends. My photography has grown along with the arsenal of equipment but the premise has always remained the same.

I was born in Switzerland in 1990 and I live in a small village close to the Swiss mountains called Fieschertal. Snow powder lies right in front of my door so I'm very fortunate. Riding some waves on a surfboard or splashing powder on the mountains are my passions, as well as playing the guitar after a ride at the beach or in an alpine cottage.

I got into photography when I was about 15. One day I had the opportunity to join a snowboard crew, who were lodging at our place, on a road gap shoot on the Simplon Pass. A pro-photographer friend of mine, Thilo Brunner, lent me his canon 1D and immediately I was so stoked that I decided I wanted to do this professionally some day. I met some pretty ambitious riders and in May 2008 I had my first shot published.

Today, I work with some snow and skateboard mags such as whiteout, Snowboarder MBM, Method Mag and others. i freelance also for some brands like eleven, nnim and my dear friends of hä?wear. Right now, I’m getting ready for university. Photography is still a hobby but it's my dream to become a professional photographer – but it's very important never to forget about the fun involved in shooting photos, not only in the art itself but also in every single shoot we take.

I was born and raised in Switzerland and live in Zürich, the biggest city, and started taking photos about 15 years ago when my dad gave me my first SLR camera. I worked as a graphic designer but wasn't happy with the work I got and started to think about being a photographer. In 2003 I combined two of my biggest passions and took my first snowboard photo.

Nowadays I work as a senior photographer for the biggest German snowboard magazine, Pleasure and travel all over the northern hemisphere to find good snow conditions. I also shoot for a lot of different snowboard magazines such as TransWorld, Method Mag or Snowboarder. Besides that I work for snowboard brands like Burton or Zimtstern.

During the season I shoot a lot with film crews like Absinthe Films to get the best riders in front of my lens. I also really like to go on photo missions without a filmer to focus on stills. Besides snowboarding, I like to shoot portraits, lifestyle and advertising during the summer.

My inspiration comes from many different sources – nature, people and places, the internet, other photographers and all the cool things I see during my travels.

I grew up in California with a passion for photography. I built a darkroom when I was about 12, and my father’s Nikon F1 remains the most treasured sentimental object that I possess. In 1983 I began film studies at UC Santa Barbara, and my career in film production began before I graduated. After this I moved to Los Angeles, where I quickly found work with a special effects company. I was fortunate enough to be involved in two Academy Award®–winning movies (for visual effects), The Abyss and Total Recall. Other opportunities and my disinterest in the L.A. lifestyle led me to Northern California. I have always been an avid sportsman and love to surf, fish, snowboard, wakeboard, and ride motocross. While involved in racing motocross, I developed some custom parts, and I started a parts and accessories business, Hammerhead Designs.

For me, the next best thing to participating in the sports that I love is to photograph them. After injuries ended my motocross racing (and due to the need for Hammerhead advertising photos), I began shooting more national races, including Supercross, Motocross, Supermoto, and Superbike. I have had photos published in numerous publications and advertisements and am a contributing photographer for Racer X Illustrated and MXP.

I was first drawn to photography in the 80’s. My father had a subscription to American Photo, and I was always impressed with the photos that were in that magazine. I couldn’t imagine people actually made a living doing something so cool as taking amazing pictures. In 1989 I moved to Boston to attend Northeastern University as an architecture major. It was at NU that I decided to take Photo 101 as an elective. The photography department was put together by a talented and interesting professor, Neal Rantoul. Neal was an 8x10 master and an important mentor during my college years.

In 1991 I moved to Aspen, Colorado, to escape the confines of the city. It wasn’t long before I was working at the local camera shop, The Walnut House. The owner made me an offer I could not refuse. I spent close to a decade shooting mountain photo, weddings, events, sports, landscapes, and tourism, and assisting other professional photographers. Aspen is an amazing place to live and shoot, but there is such a great concentration of talented photographers that you need to hold your own or be left out all together. It is Aspen where I met some of the best photographers in the world.

In 2002 I parleyed my experience and knowledge into a position at Rock & Ice and Trail Runner Magazine as the director of photography. I spent four years giving as much as I received in return and made some great friends along the way.

My wife Rixt and I have a home in Carbondale, Colorado, and currently reside in Boston, Massachusetts.In January 2007, I will travel to India to shoot a story for National Geographic Adventurer.

I have over ten years of experience in freelance adventure and sport photography. From snowboarding to fly fishing, if it is outside I have probably photographed it. My life is full of activities such as snowboarding, climbing, mountain biking, and working as a river guide for the U.S.G.S. in the Grand Canyon.

I’m constantly travelling all over the globe. My passion is documenting “dirtbags” – rock climbing addicts living and playing in the dirt – and I recently returned from a European climbing road trip covering over twenty crags (and five thousand miles) in three months. My plans include road trippin' across the U.S. continent for more climbing shoots. In the winter of 2006/07, I’m off to Southeast Asia to capture more beauty. My lovely clients include National Geographic Adventure, Bike Mag, Sports Illustrated, Patagonia, and Teva.

Almost two decades ago, I planted both feet firmly in the world of falling snow, moving water and massive stone. As extreme sports entered the American mainstream, I was there to tell the stories of athletes like rock-climbing legend Chris Sharma, kayaking pioneer Eric Jackson and world-champion surfer Lisa Anderson.

Soon, editors at National Geographic Adventure, The New York Times Magazine and Sports Illustrated regularly turned to me to bring them startling, memorable images and unforgettable stories of those who pushed the limits.

As my career evolved, I dove into the world of filmmaking, and soon found myself combining my love of still photography with motion storytelling and small-footprint productions in some of the wildest locations on earth. Now, we continue to work with some of the biggest companies in the world, who regularly turn to us to help them craft their biggest advertising campaigns and corporate stories with that same extreme passion and authenticity that we find in adventure sports.

For any passionate person who loves what he does, the line between work and play is hazy indeed. When not on assignment, I'm at home in Lake Tahoe because no matter when I open my front door, I step out to three-feet of freshly fallen snow, miles of pristine trails, towering granite walls and countless adventures just waiting to become tomorrow’s stories.

My specialization? Being in the right place at the right time. My home base is Calgary, Alberta, but I’ve covered every snowy corner of the globe in the past twenty years. It all started by shooting skiing on backcountry adventures. Seven Powder magazine covers early in my career launched a lifetime of photographing firsts: First photo crews to use cats, snowmobiles, and helis in British Columbia’s backcountry. First to document snowboarding and skiing in Valdez (Alaska), Nepal, Greenland, and Bella Coola. As senior photographer for Transworld Snowboarding magazine over sixteen years, I clocked endless global trips, countless images, and one badly abused liver!

The words I live by? Don’t take things too seriously. (Sometimes this gets me in trouble because I’ll crack a joke, usually at the wrong time.) But don’t lose the ability to laugh at yourself and see the humor in hard times. Also, I appreciate all the opportunities I have had and all the crazy places my camera has taken me. I’ll never take these for granted.

I spent my youth in the Engadin, Switzerland, where I discovered my love for mountain sports at an early age. Therefore, it goes without saying that I started to explore the high Alpine on my snowboard, and I also participated in mountain bike races during the early nineties. Photography and expeditions have taken me to Nepal, Iran, Africa, North America, and the Caucasus in Russia. In recent years, I have climbed and snowboarded down many 4,000-meter mountains in the Alps and Morocco, as well as the 5,600-meter Damavand in Iran.

After my photo design studies, I worked as an assistant in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg. During this time, I became proficient in many fields of photography, including advertising, still-life, portraits, and fashion. In 1995 I decided to combine my love for mountaineering and extreme sports with professional photography. After seven years in Munich, I now work out of Whistler, B.C., using my photography talent for magazine spreads and advertising projects worldwide. Among my clients are high-profile, special-interest publications, as well as the renowned German magazine The Stern. My photographs have been featured in advertisements for companies such as Siemens Mobile, Jack Wolfskin, Adidas, GORE-TEX, Vaude, Die Bahn, Red Bull, Kona, US40, Norco, and Oakley.

It was in the mid-'90s that I shut the doors of my surfboard shaping workshop to become a photographer and stay as close as possible to my lifetime passion: surfing. In the early days of my studies in Santiago, Chile, I started exploring not only my assigned homework, but different board sports to which I was connected by my longtime interest in surfing. With this in mind, I teamed up with three friends and gave birth to the only three-board (skate, snow, surf) magazine in Chile, taking care of most of the photographic work in its beginning.

After a few years of seeing how a growing market needed a specific surfing publication, I created Marejada, which is now recognized as one of Latin America’s finest surfing magazines. I also started getting published in different magazines around the world. Parallel to this, I started working with major brands related to sports beyond the board industry, and I also began traveling to expand my horizons.

"Naturally talented and extremely devoted, Alfredo is responsible for a great deal of what surfing is today in Chile, showing it out to the world, along with capturing the finest athletes and their lifestyles in a spectacular, innovative, and very unique way." – photographer Cristian Saavedra

For the past six years, I have found myself traveling the world, compiling a unique library of lifestyle, reportage, and action photography. In the winter of 2004/05, I relocated from Long Beach, California, to a small Wyoming town of 300 called Wilson to document the making of The Community Project snowboard film. While I was there, I met ski bunny Lyndsey Wirth at a diner they call “Dirty Norieta’s.” Ever since that quaint morning, we have been hitched.

Now back based in Long Beach with frequent business trips to New York, I bring this worldly experience and insight to all of my advertising and editorial projects. My work has appeared in a wide variety of domestic and international magazines, as well as on the covers of many slicks. In November 2006, my exhibit Body Language: A Celebration of Women was showcased at the Wooster Arts Space in SoHo, New York.

I was born in 1977 in Durban, South Africa, and I have spent five years shooting professionally in the outdoor industry. Specializing in whitewater and kayaking, I have worked as the photographer on many film and photo projects, including Red Bull Recon, the “Focused” series and other projects for Matchstick Productions, and various filming projects for Scott Lindgren Productions. My photos have been published in GQ, Surfing, Men’s Journal, Outside, and many kayak industry magazines and catalogs. I was a finalist in the Vail Mountain Games Photo Competition in 2005 and won the People’s Choice Award at the same competition in 2004.

Since 2000, I have been world traveling — I now spend summer based in North America and my other summer based in Africa (mainly Uganda and South Africa). I believe that if you want to get an image that no one else can get or has thought of, you need to be willing to do what no one else is willing to do; even if it means hanging off the back of a jetski, swimming down rapids, or balancing on the top of Victoria Falls. The harder you work for an image, the more rewarding the result will be. Following this advice as best as I can has given me my favorite shots.

As a photographer, I’m self-taught. I picked up my first SLR camera in 1993 and started shooting photos inspired by all those great photographers from Magnum. In 1998 I moved on to start shooting snowboarding, and I turned professional the same year. My photo philosophy is “less is more,” and my favorite way of making photos is with film and natural light. My areas of specialization in addition to snowboarding are documentary, lifestyle, portrait, and travel.

I am senior photographer for Snowboarder Magazine and team photographer for Head Snowboards. I submit to snowboard magazines worldwide, and my photos have made the covers of fine publications like Snowboarder Magazine, Transworld Snowboarding, Onboard, Pleasure, Snowplanet, Document Snowboard, Playboard, Fri Flyt, Freerun, Droppi, Deska Snowboarding, Snowboard Italy, and Board Russia. My work has also appeared in magazines like Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Lodown, and Reload. I’ve contributed to international ads for a number of snowboard companies, as well as Arnette, Oakley, Dragon, Volcom, Billabong, Quiksilver, DVS, Westbeach, Airwalk, Sole Technology, Sweet, and Nokia, among others.

I live in beautiful Panama City and work as a graphic designer for a clothing company called Saks Free Zone. I also work as a photograph correspondent for a Central American skateboard publication, Blastmagazine, which is based in Costa Rica, and I’ve contributed photos to the Argentinean magazine Instinto”.

My specialization is action photography, but I have created portraits, photographed the rock ‘n’ roll scene, and documented many cultural events. I am also an illustrator, both in digital and hand-drawn formats.

I was born in Beverly Hills in 1957 and graduated from Stanford University with a degree in geophysics. I began my career in photography by hitchhiking through Africa for eighteen months. Since my first assignment for National Geographic Magazine in 1987, I have completed over twenty major essays for the magazine, including three covers.

In addition to National Geographic, my work also regularly appears in GEO, Time, Architectural Digest, Condé Nast Traveler, Fortune, and Stern. My expeditions to the Sahara and Gobi deserts were featured in National Geographic Explorer television programs in 1998 and 2002. I have won numerous awards for photography during my 25-year career, including two first prizes in science and technology in 1995 and 1998 from World Press Photo. I have also won awards and citations from Pictures of the Year, Overseas Press Club, and LIFE magazine's Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards.

My latest passion is photographing the world's deserts while piloting a motorized paraglider. This experimental aircraft provides me with a unique physical perspective over remote places that are inaccessible by conventional aircraft. When I’m not on assignment, I live in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with my wife, Wall Street Journal editor Lisa Bannon, and our children Nell, John, and Nicholas.

I’ve studied media and politics and am autodidact in photography, but I went through a lot of stages and worked a long time as an assistant for different photographers. My specializations are movement and portraits, including music artists as well as athletes. From my home base in Zürich/Zizers, I work for clients like Nike, Head, Burton, Zimtstern, Sony, and Opel. I publish contributions regularly in magazines such as Pleasure, Swiss Magazine, Lodown, Snowboard UK, Snowsurf, and Word, and one of my photos was chosen as the cover shot for Transworld Snowboarding’s 2006 Photo Annual. My work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Munich and Zürich.

My recent book, Nature of Snowboarding, is my magnum opus, resulting from an intensive concentration on the theme of snowboarding over the past years. Instead of being full of high-gloss pictures, it provides an unusual view of snowboarding by focusing on the characters from different cultures and countries I have met on the scene. They all have one thing in common: a love for snowboarding. The book uncovers the nature of this sport — the life. You can read much more about the nature of snowboarding in these faces than in anything else published so far about the sport.

I started my true photo career with skateboarding. My friend and I liked to take pictures of each other doing tricks. Before I knew it I was working with Swedish skateboard magazines. After a couple of years in art and photography schools, I established my firm, James Holm Fotograf.

My venture into working with snowboarding was small, but big in another way. At that time, skateboarding was heavily influenced by the punk scene, and I kind of got tired of the attitude of not caring about good weather and expenses when we were out traveling. That was something snowboarders knew about; when the sun is shining, you’re out there doing it! But eventually I got back to my roots in skateboarding. Another thing that I’ve always been into is lifestyle portraits. I like to come to a place I’ve never been to, try to find the best thing about it, and put the person in an interesting situation. After getting my driver’s license, my interest in cars became strong, and this has been another one of my prime subjects. I think my job is to always work with things I enjoy. So therefore I see myself as a photographer within the segment of action photos, cars, and lifestyle portraits.

I’m a 29-year-old amateur photographer based in Madrid, Spain. I specialize in snowboard and skateboard photography. I also snowboard and skateboard myself, usually skating in Madrid and snowboarding in the Pyrenees and occasionally the French Alps.

I studied photography for three years in high school and recently took a course on digital photography and Photoshop. Currently, I work as a gardener in Madrid. This is the first time that I have participated in a contest of photographs of this type. In the future, I would like to work in photography professionally.

I was born in Sydney but spent most of my youth near the beaches of southwest France. After heading back to Australia for university studies, I focused on surf photography, and in 1990 the European surf-wear company, Oxbow, took me on and triggered my interest in other extreme sports. I have since worked with many champions in sports ranging from surfing and windsurfing to motocross, snowboarding, and rock climbing. My best images have made the covers of leading magazines and illustrated books, while my landscape and fashion assignments have appeared in advertisements around the globe. I am currently publishing a fine art poster collection and a book.

Still a keen surfer and snowboarder and a rusty black belt (second Dan) in the martial art of Kendo, in quiet moments I sit down at a keyboard and improvise. However, although now based on the island of Tahiti with my wife and son, striving to capture the magic of Polynesian life, I still tour the world, dedicated to the nomadic life, searching for the myriad forms of light that make unforgettable images.

I am based in Munich, which is perfect for my kind of work. The highest mountains are close, and the media and businesses I work with are not far from my office. I started my career as a journalist for different fun-sport media outlets. It was while I was working on an article about Niels-Peter Jensen, a mountain bike athlete, that I started to take pictures to make the story complete. For me, it was more interesting to be outside, working with light and right next to the action as opposed to sitting in front of the computer the whole day.

To get more knowledge about photography, I started volunteering for a fashion and portrait photographer. Using light to shape the things I was trying to capture became more and more important to me. Light and shadow, two extremes in life and photography, are part of my work — I believe less light is more interesting. Today, I shoot images for both advertisements and editorial spreads. I’ve never tried to compete in an international photo contest like Red Bull Illume before. It’s a great experience to have your picture chosen from hundreds of similar ones.

Growing up in the mountains of western Canada, the outdoors have always felt like home.

Thanks to my crazy adventurous parents, even by the age of four I had been to a long list of far-flung places.

At fourteen I moved with my family onto a sailboat, none of us having a clue about sailing. Together we spent almost seven years sailing around the globe, exploration was my education.

During the sailing voyage I picked up a camera and began photographing the people and places along the way - I’ve been addicted ever since.

Going pro in 2007, as a lifelong athlete and explorer, I gravitated to action and adventure photography.

These days I split my time between commercial work and expeditions to intense places with amazing people.

When not shooting I get outside and enjoy the sports I love.

Since 2013 I call Munich, Germany home, but most days I can be found on the move.

I was born on November 16,1967 in Interlaken, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, where I still live with my Norwegian wife, Åsta, and our three girls. Besides my professional training to become a carpenter and a mountain guide, I started early with extreme climbing. In 1988, I traveled for the first time to Patagonia; subsequently, I added six more expeditions to this place, doing important climbs but also completing the first successful traverse of the Southern Patagonian inland ice (together with Norwegian explorer Børge Ousland) in 2003.

I have published three stories in National Geographic magazine, beginning with an article about the first winter ascent of the “Ferrari” route on Cerro Torre that I did with friends in 1999. I started my career path toward becoming a world-famous adventure photographer as an autodidact – I was self-taught. Today my pictures are published in magazines such as Animan, LIFE, and Sports Illustrated, and I work for several commercial clients in the outdoor market. In addition, I work as a cameraman and filmmaker and have won several prizes for my movies. In 2006, my attempt to cross the Arctic solo and unsupported failed; nevertheless, I go on planning the next expeditions, bound to my credo: “Follow your heart!”

I was born in 1963 and raised in Lower Saxony, Germany and now live in Berchtesgaden. I started photography when I was young because my father was an amateur photographer and he passed on his enthusiasm to my two brothers and I.

At 17, I started to sport climb. Then I studied mechanical engineering in Konstanz before working for 12 years with the company Siemens in standard engineering. But photography was always more than just a hobby for me and it was only natural that I should combine my two hobbies, climbing and photography.

After I had meet Stefan Glowacz personally in 2000, I went on regular climbing expeditions in different countries of the earth. In 2003, I decided to go freelance as a photographer. Since then I’ve been self-employed with a focus on outdoor expeditions, landscape and reportage.

In my university years I started taking pictures of my passions: skiing, biking, and climbing. Then I had to make a decision. On one side I had my master’s degree in electronic engineering with a specialization in artificial intelligence, and on the other I had my camera, my skis, and my bike. Obviously, I chose the second.

My idea of photography is linked to the idea of shooting in action. I like to be part of what I’m shooting, both mentally and physically. This means being ready for the action, and I train to improve my skills and strength. From the beginning, I had the idea that having a camera didn’t make me a photographer. So I’ve been exploring every aspect of photography. Photography is not just a way of earning money or proving to be a good technician. With my small skiers lost in oceans of snow, I try to show that there is a different way to relate with nature. For me, this is the first step in my personal evolution. Thanks to photography, I’m travelling the world and meeting a lot of people. Every new experience enriches me and makes me want to find a new story to be told using only one word: click.

I am based in Cape Town, South Africa and specialize in any human-powered outdoor action.  I first studied electronic engineering, but became bored and subsequently got involved in photography.  My key clients include Red Bull, Land Rover and the majority of premium travel and adventure magazines in South Africa.

I have authored and photographed several books on mountain biking, adventure racing and trekking, and I am currently working on a guide to adrenaline destinations around the globe. I am also a contributing editor to BICYCLING Magazine. I spend a lot of time behind the lens and keyboard, and I’ve lost count of my accumulated frequent flyer miles. My free time is spent on the beautiful Cape Peninsula, kicking back with my family, paddling my sea kayak or bombing trails on a free-ride bike.  My motto is to go find the action, even if it means following the athletes from dawn to dusk.

I was born in 1979 in Prague in the Czech Republic. Around 1996, during my secondary school studies, I fell in love with the skateboard. My first photography endeavors started with shooting skateboard friends from my crew. That was the beginning of a period of hard work: spending my nights behind a bar as a bartender and making big investments in photography equipment.

Today, I work on a freelance basis, with a specialization in snowboarding, skateboarding, bikes, and product shots. I still make my home in Prague, but I’m living outside for more than 200 days each year. I am the main photographer for the Czech publication Free Magazine and for Freeride.cz Internet magazine. Other European publications that have used my photography include Boardlife, Docky, Snowboard MDS, Snow, Pleasure, Kingpin, and Playboard. I am also working as the primary photographer for a Czech company called Horsefeathers, doing action shots and product catalogs. Additional clients have included Burton, Red Bull, Fanatic, Vehicle, Funstorm, Santa Cruz, and Aeon.

I was born in Konstanz, Germany, in 1979, and I grew up between the Alps and a large lake. Any spare time was filled with the search for new adventures in the mountains or on the water. After attending the Rudolf Steiner School in Wahlwies and serving an apprenticeship as a carpenter, I moved to Bielefeld in 2004 to study photography, media, and art.

My main focus lies in lifestyle photography in connection with action and fashion images. With the establishment of the floriangrill.com Studio in Hamburg in 2007, I will further develop this concept in the high-end area with — among other equipment — the Hasselblad H3D camera system. So far I have shot action photos for Etnies, Eastern Bikes, TSG/Titus, Twenty Inch Magazine, and Ride BMX Magazine UK, among others, and I won the Schlueschen-Stiftung award for sport photography in both 2005 and 2006. In the future, I wish to be able to continue to cooperate with such great people and to pursue my passion of photography.

I am based in Munich, Germany, and though my portfolio includes many types of photography, I specialize in extreme sport events, shooting only digital with Canon! I started with snowboard photography in 1995, and I also worked as editor for Modern Sport Magazine and Piranha Magazine. In 1999 I took part in the first ever Red Bull Photochallenge in Cortina d’Ampezzo, shooting a mountain bike race that was held in an ice channel for bobsleighs.

In the following years I’ve especially liked shooting freestyle motocross, Red Bull Air Race events, and Red Bull Crashed Ice (ice cross downhill), as well as mountain bike downhill and freeride or BMX (especially miniramp and flatland). My favorite events each year are the Red Bull X-Fighters in Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring and the Battle of the Year — the World Championships in breakdancing! I’ve shot for Red Bull, Adidas, Braun, Duracell, Sony, Samsung, the Fiat Freestyle Team, and, of course, a lot of magazines. I believe that you should enjoy every day of your life!

At 55, I have spent half my life photographing and writing about skiing and ski mountaineering. It’s been my pleasure and good fortune to travel the world’s mountains — including four of its tallest peaks — with friends intent on capturing the adventure of ski-touring, alpine climbing, and ski descent. Just one of the many gratifications such journeys provide is working with the indigenous peoples of remote locales, in the process learning something of their culture and becoming their friends.

My photos and articles from Jackson Hole, Alaska, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Antarctica have appeared in numerous national and international publications, including Powder, Backcountry, Men’s Journal, ESPN, Fall Line, Fluid, Powder Hound, and FreeSkier. I shoot commercial assignments and stock for clients such as Cloudveil, Patagonia, The North Face, and Marmot. I am co-owner of Focus Productions, Inc. (focusproductions.com) with another longtime Jackson Hole photographer, Bob Woodall, and publish three annual visitors’ guides: Jackson Hole Skier, Mountain Country, and the Jackson Hole Dining Guide. In the winter of 2006/07, I will shoot a ski adventure in Kashmir.

I have been taking pictures since childhood, with the camera next to me and sharing in every adventure and passion of my life. I was a professional windsurfer and snowboarder before graduating with a degree in economics and undertaking a successful career in management consulting in Rome, London, and New York. After seven years in the “serious” business world, and while being a vice-president for a famous branding and design firm in New York City, I decided I was finally ready to leave the tie in the closet and go back to my roots. With many pictures in my portfolio already, transitioning to professional photography was an easy step. I started with a portrait exhibition in New York, and currently I’m a Nikon Pro with more than twelve magazine covers worldwide.

I am just simply in love with photography. My specialization is lifestyle and portraits, combined with a great love and passion for extreme sports, which I shoot whenever possible. I live between upstate New York (where I have my own photo studio and spend most of the year) and Italy (my home in the summer months), and I travel the world for assignments. My clients include Lavazza USA, RRD International, Montecristo, RealBeDifferent, and Plastik.

I got started in photography by shooting skateboarding. For the first eight years I shot skateboarding in my hometown of Ulvila, Finland. After I finished school I moved to Helsinki to get a job. For three years, I was an IT specialist - you know, coding programs and being a real nerd. From that nerd job I got enough money to buy some nice camera equipment and almost immediately started to shoot snowboarding.

Three years was enough to be a nerd so I started working with a skate and snowboard distributor in Finland. With that job I got more time to shoot. After shooting two to three years almost full time, I decided to take charge and became a full-time photographer.

In the winter, I make my living from shooting snowboarding and the rest of the year I shoot stuff for corporate communications, events, products, people, and anything else to get money to live.

I take my job seriously. When it comes to photos, I am a perfectionist. I’ll sometimes use six to eight flashes to fill light where I want that light to be. From looking at my photos, you can easily see that I like to play with flashes.

I was born on May 23, 1973, in the Czech Republic. I got started in photography at age 10 with a camera that was a gift from my grandfather. At 14, I started rock climbing and always had a camera around my neck. After I finished technical engineering school, I left for a surfing trip to Hawaii where I discovered the magic of landscape photography.

I got seriously into photography on a trip to Mt. McKinley in 1996. My work was first published in 1997 and in the same year, I founded Sharp Pictures, a multimedia agency specializing in the international sport industry. Since then, I have been working as a freelance photographer. I shoot catalogs and ads for clients such as Rip Curl, Quiksilver, Fomei, Tamron, and Sensor. I also make and collaborate on movies, including Goosneck and Real Night in Prague (mountain biking) and Just One Day (snowboarding). A trip to photo-shoot and film life and backcountry snowboarding in forgotten Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria and Romania resulted in another movie as well as stories and photos in magazines. In 2002, I attended the Vancouver Film School and although I still live in the Czech Republic, Whistler is my second home.

In 1998, I started to work for the Polish magazine Slizg (music, skateboarding, graffiti, etc.). At first, I was a journalist, but then I started to take an interest in photography. I was shooting music events and some portraits, and finally I started to work with skateboarders as I had always been fascinated by skateboarding. I spent a lot of time on my board, but — to be honest — I wasn't very talented.

At the moment, I'm based in Warsaw and am focused on sport photography. Skateboarding, snowboarding, and freeskiing are my favorite subjects. I really love what I'm doing: working with friends, meeting new people, traveling and visiting new spots and new places, trying to "catch the moments" with my camera, and learning everyday. Sometimes it's not easy to make a living from it, but the most important thing is that it gives me so much satisfaction. I would like to thank all my friends and all the athletes I have worked with since without them, I couldn't do what I'm doing – lots of love!

My specialization is snowboarding. I love the sport and that’s why I started shooting it. My home base is Vienna in the summer and the mountain village of Schladming in the winter. I have no professional background and am autodidact, or self-taught. I work with snowboard mags and the snowboard biz all around the world, and I am still stoked if one of my pictures gets published.

Being out in the mountains with your friends and working with them is the best job I can imagine!

I was 15 when I broke my ankle skateboarding and picked up a camera. Things kinda just took off from there and somehow I've managed to score a job where I'm literally living a dream… or at the very least watching it from courtside seats. Sure I still pull plenty hours in the Surfing Magazine office so it's not all boat trips and plush hotels, but I could count the days on one hand that I've actually dreaded going to "work", and those must have all been because of hangovers!

Surfing is still my favorite thing in the world to do, followed by traveling with friends, capturing moments with a camera, and newly, snowboarding. My main goals are to have as much fun as possible, laugh at all the hilarious situations, continue to stay psyched on life by living like a little kid, and be an honest and genuinely good human.

Go Jaguars!

I was born in Italy in 1972 and graduated in economics in December 1996. One month later, I moved to Münich and worked there until 2002 as an accountant. My passion for the mountains took me away from the office and threw me in the mountain biking/skiing/snowboarding battlefield where I work with some of the best riders, searching for the most dramatic scenery for photo shoots. My clients have included Bike Magazine, Skiing, Magura, Fusion Bikes, Canyon Bikes, and Amplid.

What I do doesn’t feel like work. It’s always fun, even taking photos at -20° Celsius in deep powder snow or carrying my mountain bike over a 5,000-meter Himalayan pass. Obviously, you don’t get a salary at the end of the month, but if this is the price for freedom, I am glad I can pay it. Being international is part of my life: my wife is from Sweden, my father from Belgium, my mother from Italy, my newborn son Axel a European who has to manage three languages in his family. I live close to Münich in a 350-year old farmhouse in a small village not far from the mountains. I speak Italian, German, and English fluently, and I write for many magazines in addition to providing photographs.

After living in Riksgränsen, Sweden, for two seasons as a ski bum, I started my career in print journalism with Vertikal Magazine, eventually landing in Åre as editor of Sweden’s national ski magazine, Åka Skidor. But the meetings and the long hours in the office started to wear on me. So I hit the reboot button. I grabbed my camera, went into the mountains, and started taking photos. Over the next few years I got heavy into the whole action-sport scene. That’s where the bulk of my work is today: living out of a big, gear-filled bag, traveling the world to shoot awesome athletes, trying to keep my points up so I can eat free cake in the Gold Club lounge. I have been a pro photographer since 2000.

Today my work regularly appears in photo-driven, industry-leading magazines like Powder. I also contribute to a host of other magazines around the world like Bike (U.S.), SBC Skier (Canada), Fluid (France), and Skiing: the next level (Germany). My humble services as a photographer and photo editor are also contracted out by Åre-based Peak Performance magazine, Transition (Sweden), and Magasin Åre (Sweden).

And even though I’m a Swede and I can’t play hockey to save my life, I was invited to Canada in 2003 to be a presenter at the World Ski and Snowboard Festival’s internationally renowned Pro Photographer’s Showdown. I like tight-fitting clothes, electro, house, and heavy metal music, and women who like to rub my scalp as if it were a magic ball.

I’m from Alberta, Canada. In 1987 after graduating from a photography program in Edmonton at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology I moved to Calgary and began a nine-year career as a photographer at the Calgary Sun newspaper. In 1988 I landed an assignment shooting the Winter Olympics for the Canada Olympic Association.

After that I spent the next nine years shooting news and sports in the Calgary area. During that time I was also a wire service freelance photographer for Agence France Presse (AFP). When the sport of mountain biking began to take shape in the 80s a few mountain bike publications began to appear and my girlfriend handed me an early copy of Bike magazine and said, “you should get some photos like this”. After that I began to bring a camera on mountain bike rides.

During a holiday to California in 1994 I phoned David Reddick – photo editor at Bike magazine and asked him if he would look at my portfolio of cycling photos and after that he asked me to start contributing photos to the magazine. At that time very few photographers were taking pictures of mountain biking – it was still a very small sport. In 1995, I began to shoot photos for the Kona Mountain Bike Company as their full time photographer. In 1996 I started my own business and began to shoot the sport of mountain biking full time. Twenty years later I am still doing the same thing – taking photos of people riding their bikes. The world of photography has changed drastically in my lifetime but many things have remained exactly the same.

My name is Jeroen Nieuwhuis and I live in a small town in the eastern part of the Netherlands. I started photography when I was 11 years old, capturing friends with the camera I got for my birthday. My obsession for photography quickly grew and started to feel like something more than just a hobby, leading me to spend all the money I got on new gear. After a couple of years, my photographic interest shifted to genres other than just skateboarding. I started shooting portraits of friends and posting them on different forums to receive feedback on them. Slowly I developed my own taste in photography and started to look at images differently.

Nowadays, I work as a freelance photographer and co-owner of a photography and film studio. Photography has taken me from the cold landscapes of the North Cape to the warm favelas of Brazil. I can't wait to see the rest of this beautiful planet! 

It all started 20 years ago with my passion for documenting and creating aesthetic images that tell stories. As an action sports specialist, I have been shooting outdoor activities all over the world, working closely with the best athletes in freeskiing, mountaineering, BASE jumping, kayaking, sailing and more.

By accumulating a lot of experience in various challenging natural environments, I have learned techniques to shoot, store and distribute content from remote places, ranging from capturing the best shots to workflow management in production teams and content distribution both online and offline.

I am Swiss, so my first natural playground was the Alps and the beautiful lakes we have, bouncing from mountain activities to water sports depending on the season. My inspiration comes from nature and unique lighting situations. I always try to think twice about the framing of a photograph and incorporate elements that are not expected. Silhouettes, shapes, shadows – my goal is to find different perspectives on any given subject.

I like photojournalism a lot. Through my travels I look for good subjects, forcing myself to tell a story through a single frame. I love the challenge and try to take timeless images, being more interested in ‘imperfect’ photography – images that are suggestive and can open a discussion – than obvious shots. I love to go out and play – and if at the end of the day I have one good picture to show... I call it a perfect day!

I have been shooting big wave surfing and action shots for more than a decade. I was born in Brazil. From a very young age I was transfixed by the ocean and waves. I majored in architecture at college; afterwards I travelled the world taking photos as my hobby and surfing as much as I could.

While I was working as an architect in Brazil I realized that sitting at a desk, designing buildings was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I felt like I was wasting my days, so I quit my job and put my mind to cultivating my career incorporating my two passions, photography and surfing.

I live in Los Angeles where I can catch a quick flight to most places – most of the time it’s last minute to catch the swells – and where I can surf year round.

I think I’ve always been quite an image-oriented person, being much more drawn to imagery than words. As a kid I used to look in magazines and dream of the places I saw. My interest in action and adventure sports started a bit later on, some time in my teens. My best friend and I were crazy about snowmobiling. We used to watch Slednecks movies and dream of one day being in one. It carried on and when we got old enough to get our licenses we took every opportunity we got to go out and ride. It didn’t take long before we started making movies and taking pictures of each other, still dreaming about one day riding with the Slednecks crew. I remember looking at the images and movies in the summertime, dreaming of winter and snowmobiling.

Then I went on to university, moved to a new city and kind of lost touch with both photography and snowmobiling. I studied for about a year and a half until I realized it really wasn’t for me. I dropped out, not really knowing what to do with my time. I picked up snowmobiling again and raced sno-x for a while. And with snowmobiling also came the urge to document it again. I decided to take a few photography classes and did so for about a year.

After I had finished, I decided to pack my car and drive around the country. I lived in my car for a couple of months, photographing everything I did. Eventually I ended up in Åre, Sweden’s ski and bike capital. This was about two years ago and I’ve been photographing ever since. My dream is to one day make my living as a full time photographer. I pray for that day to come!

I was born and raised in a small wine village in southwest Germany. When I was about 12 years old, skateboarding and taking photos with my dad’s Canon reflex cam were about my biggest passions in life. I was sure that either I’d become a pro skateboarder or a pro photographer. Needless to say, my skate-career didn’t go far. My favorite sports changed over the years but the photography has stayed!

Finally, at 27, I decided to learn photography as a profession. My time as a trainee was characterized with lots of food and fashion photography. Still, having a sports mindset I gravitated towards shooting pictures of all different extreme-sport genres when I was unleashed onto the world.

I am really happy to say that I earn my money with the best job on earth; who else gets the chance to work with interesting people all over the world at the most beautiful places you could imagine? And capture these moments for good!

I was born in the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada where the only things that separated me from the North Pole were a stained wooden fence and some crushed rock. At the age of 16, I was ‘abducted’ from high school by an unsuspecting cult organization and forced to ski moguls and lame tricks off Lemmings Leap under the 7th heaven chairlift – the original stimulus for my interest in airtime photography.

Home was a friend’s Volkswagen that we would park underground, below the conference centre. There we would take power from the last stall of the third floor to heat the ’73 Westfalia. I subsisted on leftover food from the Rendezvous restaurant atop Blackcomb Mountain and wore clothing left in the lost and found. During the early 1990s I acquired my first camera when a drunk French-Canadian freestyle skier, being pursued by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, stashed it along with twenty rolls of unexposed Fuji Provia and a half bottle of Rye Whiskey in stall number three of the Garfinkle's washroom. My destiny was sealed.

In 1998, the world’s largest and most prestigious snowboard magazine, TransWorld SNOWboarding, recruited me as a staff photographer. Now, 18 years later, I still work for them among many other brands and publications. I have had thousands of action sports photos published worldwide including more than 100 covers.

I was born in Morlaix, France, in 1990. My interest in photography started with my family, my father especially, and grew when I started riding BMX at 14. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time riding and traveling with my friends to find riding spots along the Atlantic coast of France. I was lucky enough to share both of these passions with my friends, and as they became better at riding BMX, my photography evolved as well. This lead to my work being published in a magazine for the first time when I was 16.

At 21, I graduated from photography school, and after working in a few studios, I decided to pursue filmmaking and photography as an independent. Today I am dedicated to film and photography as a creative vision as well as a profession and lifestyle.

I'm in my element when I shoot sports, especially biking, motorsports, and surface water sports like surfing or wake-boarding. I try to remain close to my BMX origins, partly because it offers endless opportunities to be creative, but also because this sport is the starting point of my passion for capturing life on film.

It all started back in the former Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) at the age of three when my dad strapped skis on my feet and pushed me down the local hill. Since then, I pretty much skied every winter until I was about 17-years-old, when I got my first snowboard. I would park cars at luxurious hotels in the summer and coach snowboarding in the winter.

After finishing college I moved to NYC to embark on a hotel management in-ternship. That’s when I used to steal my roommate’s camera and shoot ran-dom photos around the city. Halfway through the internship I went to TGR’s ‘High Life’ premiere. The movie just blew my mind, so two weeks later I packed my stuff and moved to Whistler, BC.

After the first season in Whistler, I joined a few of my buddies on their surf trip down to Mexico. With the first camera I’d ever owned, a Canon 350D and one lens, I documented the trip and sent a few photos to Mat Rendek, the editor of Boardlife. He loved the photos and we ended up getting a 12-page story pub-lished from that trip. That was the beginning of it all.

Nowadays, residing in Vancouver, Canada, I’ve worked for a number of great clients, crews and magazines all over the world and I’ll be chasing that ‘next great photo’ for the rest of my life.

Although I was always taking pictures during my school years, my real path towards becoming a professional photographer started when I got injured during a windsurfing competition and I had to stay on the shore for a while. I just couldn’t sit on the beach doing nothing; I wanted to get closer to the action. So I took a camera and got myself on the race officer’s boat as a photographer.

At first I just wanted to see the action but then I ended up only shooting pictures. After that I was invited to shoot various windsurfing competitions and later on all kinds of different sports. A year later, I enrolled in the Estonian Academy of Arts to study photography.

Today my main focus is on motorsports but I love to shoot other sports. Thanks to Nikon and Elinchrome I can try almost anything that comes to mind. I am always trying to find something new in every shoot: new lighting techniques, cool remote camera places or anything else. I believe there are a lot of interesting things yet to be discovered in the world of photography.

I was born in Athens in 1980. I graduated from the Technological Institute of Athens in Greece as a Technologist of Graphic Arts and Design. For two years I worked at the scanning and photo editing department of a major newspaper in Greece and spent another two years working at a print shop. In addition, I have been the owner of the pre-press company PoisonDesign for more than five years.

My photographic skills are self-taught and I have never attended a photography school. I just love taking pictures, especially of extreme sports. For the past three years, I have been the official photographer of ProBase, a company that organizes BASE Jumping events all over the world.

Having my own climbing and photography equipment, I push my limits by trying to reach the edge of every exit point, no matter if it’s at 20m or 1,000m, from a helicopter or a plane. There is nothing more satisfying than the rush of a human being leaping from a safe place and diving towards the ground only with a parachute – I simply love what I do!

I’m Markus Braumann, 31 years old and raised and living in Berlin. It was a difficult decision for me to spend a huge amount of money on my first DSLR and some equipment.

My first intention after buying a camera was to get shots and impressions for my sponsors of my weekly trips as a BMX pro. Since day one with my own amateur photo equipment I felt that my money was spent well.

I was so excited about the new possibilities. I was hungry for more and better lenses and other equipment. While problems with an injury of my back became more annoying, the passion for the photography became bigger and bigger. People gave me positive feedback, I earned the first bugs with my new hobby and my motivation to change my focus from doing professional sports to being a photographer was stable.

Since day one I love shooting BMX, but as a freelancer I still try to go many different directions with my camera to make new experiences.

I'm a wildlife, water and landscape photographer based on the west coast of Ireland. I'm focused on wild marine mammals, the ocean, waves, surf photography and beautifully lit coastal sceneries. I try to capture the beauty of nature in its purest aspects. All my underwater images are taken during freediving in natural light in order to make them look as realistic as possible.

My work is well recognized around the world and has been exhibited in Washington, London and Japan. My photography has appeared in the pages of Nature’s Best, BBC Wildlife magazine, BBC Focus, Nikon Pro, Outdoor Photography and many more.

My name is Michael Burnett and I live in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California. I became interested in photography as a teenager, staring at skateboard magazines – a hard-to-find commodity in the small Texas town I grew up in.

As a student at the University of Colorado in Boulder I started making my own homemade skate 'zine, taking photos and writing about my friends and our adventures. After graduating with a journalism degree I was lucky enough to get my dream job – a staff photographer for Thrasher magazine. Seventeen years later and I'm the editor at large of this storied publication, still shooting photos and constantly stoked to be out skateboarding with some of the best in the world.

It took me quite awhile to get my technical skills down (this was in the film era mind you,) but soon after I realized I also needed to pay attention to the more subtle moments that happened while I was out chasing around the rad. Inspired by street photographers like Robert Frank and my friends Ed Templeton and Fred Mortagne, I appreciate a funny reaction, epic composition or impromptu portrait just as much as the biggest air or handrail.

You know you truly love doing something if you’re willing to get up early, stay up late, spend tons of money, and keep trying at it after countless failures. I began dusting myself off and trying again with BMX over 20 years ago, and photography followed shortly after.

When you boil them down, they’re inherently the same – you have a tool that you can operate by yourself, and once you learn how to use it, you can manipulate it and ap-ply your own style to it. I’ve always considered myself to be extremely lucky to turn the marriage of my two labors of love into what I do everyday for a living.

The staff position I’ve held at RideBMX magazine for the last 15 years has enabled me to travel the world, meet countless amazing people, and photograph a lot of in-credible BMX riding. The constant demands and unpredictability of the day-to-day grind of a BMX photographer has forced me to continuously hone my skills and con-stantly refine my style as a photographer and prepare me for any situation or subject matter.

I began my artistic journey through drawing, painting and tattooing. After six years as a professional outdoor photographer, I joined the Slack.fr team as a senior photographer and creative manager where my time is divided between developing creative content for the slackline company and traveling the world for photo projects.

During those years, I've worked with global outdoor press and brands. Today, my attachment to Slack.fr allows me to be a bit more selective with my work and definitely spend more time on personal projects.

2015 was a great year for traveling and shooting. It started in January with a trip to Japan where I witnessed and fully appreciated a two meter snow pack. In September Leo Taillefer dragged me on a freeski trip to Patagonia.

After a short stay in France, I flew to Vietnam to shoot the last part of a portrait project based on the traditions of ethnic minorities. Photography has always brought me that daily dose of inspiration and motivation I need. The focus might change but the creative process remains vital to me.

I am a professional photographer and cinematographer based in Switzerland and have been interested in photography since my teenage years. I knew a career in photography would be challenging, so I followed my parents’ advice to get a university degree first. In 2009 I got my Master in Sport Science.

However, my passion for photography was more alive than ever and I decided to start my career as a photographer. I am so keen on photography that it has not only become part of my life but also nourishes my dreams.

My favorite subjects are outdoor sports, in particular sailing and mountaineering. Indeed I have always found the wind, snow, water and freezing conditions very inspiring. I like to observe the interaction between athletes and nature. Today, my work includes both photography and video, in Switzerland as well as abroad. I would change my job for nothing on earth, as photography brings me everything I ever pursued. Thanks to this very varied art, I can travel and discover amazing places as well as meet a lot of enriching people.

I was born in Austria and grew up in an environment of steep mountains and wild rivers. Sports have always played an important role in my life since I was a kid. About 14 years ago, my uncle bought me a camera and I started taking pictures of friends climbing rocks and riding their mountain bikes.

During my studies at the University of Applied Sciences I focused on photography. In 2007 I finished my master thesis in photography and was awarded a diploma in environmental technologies. In 2009 I decided to turn my passion into a career and have been specializing in sports, portrait and lifestyle photography ever since.

For me, photography is all about the right moment. The right angle, nice light conditions and good vibes are the best recipe for top shots!

One day when I was 13 and still going to school in Switzerland, we were given this homework assignment to write about how we saw our future and what we wanted to be. I was excited about it – and believe me, that didn't happen very often at school!

The next day, I proudly stood at the front of the classroom, presenting my story about wanting to be a photographer when I leave school to my classmates and teacher. My teacher took me aside afterwards and said, “It’s great that you are enthusiastic about your hobby, Romina, but you should really think about a decent profession!”

Thirteen years later, when I was at the supermarket, I bumped into the same teacher again. He asked me how things were going and mentioned he had heard me being interviewed on the radio about sports photography.

It was with great delight that I gave him my business card, which read "Romina Amato Photography", and told him how I was having an absolute blast traveling around, photographing cool stuff and amazing people in fantastic locations and even making a living from it – just like a "decent profession"!

I’m from Perth, Western Australia. I feel my photographic passion wasn’t ignited by a single definitive moment, rather that a natural progression of events has led me down this path from a very young age. I’d always enjoyed capturing images but not until I began taking photography classes while completing an Advanced Diploma in graphic design at University did I start to really learn the craft.

As an avid surfer, it was only a matter of time before my passion for the ocean and photography merged. I began shooting seascapes and surf in my spare time while working as an advertising creative, but after four years in an office, my wanderlust was undeniable. After a golden opportunity presented itself, I left the career behind to pursue my photographic dreams and moved to the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia where I would endeavor to forge my way as a surf photographer.

Six years later, photography has taken me all over the world and I’m so honoured to still be living my dream. If the experiences I’ve had and the friendships I’ve made to date are anything to go by, I’m so excited to see where photography is going to lead me next.

I was born in a little town close to the mountains in 1980. Twenty years later I graduated from college as a graphic designer and photographer. During those years I was able to study and work with analog systems and black and white prints.

After my graduation I did some photographic and calligraphic courses and I've been working as a freelance professional photographer for eight years now. I’ve covered positions for the main snowboard magazines in Italy, and am currently working with international titles as well as extreme sports brands.

I started as a skater, but after three knee surgeries I had to quit and moved to snowboarding. I’m still riding as much as I can. Over the past five years I have dedicated my time to riding and shooting in the backcountry. I also love to shoot any kind of action sport and always stick to my style which distinguishes me.

I believe that photography is a silent and sophisticated form of sensibility, different for every one of us. A real photo should be able to tell a story, a story that stays in your mind forever. I also believe I have the Peter Pan syndrome – I’m a half hippie, half gipsy living in the Italian countryside when not traveling around the world, and still believe in dreams.

Growing up in the south of Munich (more precisely in Breitbrunn at the Ammersee) in the 1990s, I was strongly influenced by the Alps that surrounded me. About three years ago, I picked up my first camera and followed my friends into the mountains. It was my passion to highlight the culture and mountains surrounding me.

Recently I have moved to Innsbruck, Austria to combine my studies with my passion for action sports photography. This step has not only helped me become a team photographer for the German Salomon Freeski Team, but has also given me the opportunity to work as a photo intern for downdays’ Freeski Journal and shoot the biggest European freeski events such as Nine Knights and Nine Queens.

I've come a long way and my camera has given me the chance to meet many great people and capture many great moments and emotions. Right now, I’m in my fourth semester studying Management & Economics in Innsbruck. This year I decided to take a break from my photography for a while and fully concentrate on university. Apart from photography, I’m also into mountain biking, climbing, sailing and kitesurfing in the summer.

I am a professional adventure and travel photographer residing in Squamish, BC, Canada. My photography career began back in 1995 when my girlfriend, and now wife, loaned me a point and shoot camera for a six-month solo trip through Asia. Armed with eight rolls of film I quickly realized I needed a better camera, and wanted to keep traveling.

Twenty years later I’m still on the road but now shoot for some of the top outdoor companies in North America, and I have a way better camera!

In a fast paced digital era I have stayed true to my style of shooting in natural light, creating images composed of clean lines and searching out unique locations.

I was born in the UK and got my first taste of skiing and snowboarding during gap-year travels that took me to Whistler in British Columbia, Canada. I returned to England to complete a degree in Aerospace Engineering but I could never really get Whistler out of my mind. During university I took regular trips to Europe and my love for the outdoors and mountain lifestyle continued to grow.

After finishing my degree, I headed back to Whistler for "one more year" and this time I purchased a camera just before I set off and soon found my passion for mountain life also extended to documenting it. Local magazines began asking to use my images and once I saw them in print I knew that the path in life that I had originally chosen was now changed forever. Within a year I had transitioned to shooting ski photography full time and my list of clients grew steadily to the point where I have done work for most of the major ski companies and many of the biggest ski magazines across the globe.

I live full time in Whistler now, and I am a permanent Canadian resident. My passion for photography has grown to encompass many other fields, including motorsports, landscapes and wildlife. As well as shooting I also love to teach and I split my time between working for my clients and writing educational photography content for a variety of websites and magazines. This year I have also launched my own educational company called Shutter Muse, a website where people can follow my adventures and receive in-depth educational content on specific techniques like sequences as used in Red Bull Illume ...

Alaska is my homeland and the wild places here are the main source of my creative inspiration. Photography is a passion and a tool that both documents and supports my lifestyle. Twelve short years ago I resigned from a decade of commercial fishing in Alaska and have been focused on photography as my career ever since.

The subjects I photograph are the things I love most; in this way photography has supported the pursuit of my passions in life and enabled me to stay light-footed and in touch with the natural cycles of life and nature. As my interests change, so do my subjects. Cold water surfing and flying are two of my favorite things, so naturally I shoot a lot of aerials and surfing photos. Occasionally I even combine the two!

My photography work is for both assignment and stock, with a healthy balance of personal projects.

I found a passion with photography at an early age when I was gifted my first SLR camera at the age of ten. Nearly 30 years later, the passion has only intensified. I feel lucky to have been introduced during the era of film and darkrooms.

Early on in my life, I realized I was going to be spending a lot of time in the mountains. I was born at the base of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City, Utah and started skiing and climbing at a very early age.

I am fortunate to have a profession that takes me to the corners of the planet. To the summits of the highest mountain peaks, to below the surface of the sea, I am dedicated to capture these moments to make them live forever.

I grew up in the mountains of Western Colorado and graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Journalism. I shoot adventure sports and travel for top magazines and commercial clients worldwide.

I regularly work with editorial and advertising clients that span the globe, including National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine,  ESPN.com, Men’s Journal, and Outside Magazine. My commercial clients include G-Tech, Nikon, Lowepro, Manfrotto, SanDisk, Garmin, Patagonia, Gore-Tex, Marmot and Land Rover.

Ever since I got my first 35mm SLR as a kid I enjoyed taking photos – it was a fun thing to do. But it wasn’t until I made a photo journal as part of my high school senior project for a trip called the ‘March of the Living’ (6,000 Jewish teens touring the Nazi concentration camps of Poland) that I realized the power of an image.

Growing up between the southern Connecticut shore and the mountains of Vermont I was lucky enough to strap on a pair of skis at the age of two, and spend many summers in the ocean at Martha's Vineyard. As a competitive freestyle skier traveling the country, I quickly caught the travel bug. My sense of adventure took me out of the cold New England mountains to the warm shores of Australia. There I spent a year learning to surf, and began taking photos of both surfing and the amazing beauty of Australia. Soon I learned that with little more than my camera and surfboard I was immensely happy.

Upon returning stateside, I moved to Boston, where I began my career working throughout the New England region as a photographer, urban planner, and freestyle ski coach. Falls were spent chasing hurricane swells from Rhode Island to New Hampshire, and weekends in winter on the snow in Vermont. By 2007 I was seriously missing the beach life, and took an urban planning job, which allowed me to relocate to Orange County, California. In 2009 I made the switch to full time photography.

Since my first Fine Art sale in 2005 I have traveled as much of the world as possible, combining my passion for adventure and action sports with my love for photography.

My interest in photography started when I picked up my first issues of skateboarding magazines. I immediately identified with not only the action in the photos, but with the image itself. The photographs struck a chord with me and in a subconscious way got me thinking about composing still life images of my friends as we skateboarded all over the Southwest United States.

It wasn’t until some years later while living in Vail, Colorado that I actually picked up a camera and started taking pictures. My buddies and I owned a small snowboarding company which didn’t have the budget to pay for ad photos, so we learned to photograph, design catalogs and create a website ourselves. It was a learn-out-of-necessity scenario, and although we made plenty of mistakes, we were learning with everything we tried.

Eventually I moved out to Burlington, Vermont in 1999 to work for Burton Snowboards as a Team Manager. This led to the job of Principal Photographer in 2003, which I still have to this day, documenting the Burton Team as they make their way around the world for contest, photo shoots and film trips.

I’m a photographer from Burgos, a town situated in the north of Spain. Some years ago I discovered an incredible world named photography. All my life has been about BMX riding and when I took up photography I tried to create a new vision of the Spanish BMX scene.

I shoot for different brands such as Fly Bikes, G-Shock, Arnette, Dickies or Pirate as well as for bike magazines like Wallride Magazine, Ride BMX Magazine, DIG BMX or Freedom BMX.

All my inspiration comes from traveling, friends, colors, sensations, smells and bikes. I love taking photos in strange places like derelict skate parks with lots of old cement and ‘agro’ textures. I’m also passionate about the mountains – the interplay of colors and light there is amazing!

I'm originally from a very small town in Latvia called Ventspils, but now I live and work as a professional freelance photographer in London, UK.

My journey as a photographer started when I was already filming my friends skateboarding on my parents’ camera and was about to go to university to pursue a career in filming. Right at the start of my first course, on top of all our regular subjects, we got a class in traditional black and white photography. I got so excited and into it, especially shooting on film and developing everything in the darkroom, that I changed my mind and switched to a photography course and eventually graduated as a photographer.

I never stopped filming, but in my head I decided that I wanted to be a professional photographer and earn my living that way and leave filming as a hobby. So to fulfil that dream I moved to London and spent two years working as a studio assistant getting experience, knowledge and saving for the equipment to be able to work as a freelancer.

Nowadays I shoot skateboarding and non-skateboarding events and campaigns both in the UK and in Europe. I'm happy where I am and can't wait to see where photography will take me next.

I am an action adventure lifestyle photographer. I grew up riding bicycles, motorcycles, skateboards, and going camping with my family. Team sports and rules never appealed to us. I've been shooting professionally since 1998 when I graduated from college and started shooting model portfolios. I assisted professionally for six years with a plan of moving to New York, but ended up spending a season in Summit County, Colorado, where I quickly found that I was better at capturing action than beauty! I shot snowboarding exclusively for seven years, traveling the globe forever chasing snowstorms, until I decided to branch out into action in general. Nowadays I love shooting skateboarding, motorcycling, running, and the lifestyle that surrounds our odd obsessions.

I'm really more attracted to conceptual action photography these days. When I shoot, I try to think of a new way of capturing the action, something that hasn't been done before. I've gotten tired of only shooting what's there; instead I try to think outside of the box and think, "what COULD be there?" I also really enjoy teaming up with athletes who like to take the extra time and effort to work with me on my concepts, even though we might not be getting the standard 'banger'. It takes a bit of a leap of faith to put your trust in someone who isn't shooting the standard shots, and I definitely appreciate that.

I am a documentary and adventure sport photographer. I grew up in Saudi Arabia and it instilled in me a penchant for adventure and interest in different cultures. I began taking photography classes in university while I was majoring in Outdoor Recreation. I quickly fell in love with the medium as it allowed me to combine my two passions of art and outdoor sports in a very creative way. From that moment on, I would take my camera with me on all my outdoor adventures and my love for photography grew.

In 2004 I began sailing around the world and my photography progressed as I traveled and adventured in different countries. For almost a decade I have called a 60ft catamaran my home as I’ve sailed to the wildest corners of the planet on a global kiteboarding, paragliding and surfing expedition that’s taken me to over 60 countries. This experience has provided me with an incredible platform to pursue my passion for photography in unique and inspiring environments.

Today, I live in the mountain town of Sun Valley, Idaho and work as a freelance photographer. I am currently a Nat Geo Creative photographer and some of my current clients include National Geographic, Patagonia, Leica and Ford.

I am a freelance photographer born in Warsaw, Poland in 1974. I started my career in 1998 and specialize in underwater, freediving and scuba-diving photography for magazines such as Playboy, Elle or Uroda.

About five years ago, I started freediving training with the Warsaw Freediving Team. Soon, I was taking pictures of the freedivers and doing underwater fashion shoots and the whole thing quickly turned into my biggest passion.

Apart from that, I have a nine-year-old son called Anthony and love mangos, traveling, taking pictures and water.

My photographic journey started years before I owned a camera. During my high school years, I endured the classroom grind by daydreaming while fixating on the glossy photographs in action sports magazines. The images resonated powerfully, motivating me to poach my mom’s point-n-shoot camera to document my own adventures in the mountains. Through a self-taught trial and error method that burned many rolls of film, I was able to establish a career doing what I love.

The never-ending learning process of taking photographs fascinates me. It’s an obsession seeking magical unexpected moments, all the while deciphering the light to capture a certain feeling in a single frame.

I feel very fortunate to call the coast of British Columbia home with a vast backyard that has far more than I’ll ever be able to capture. I’ve recently started photographing the world of fly fishing which continues to keep me awake at night. I will forever gravitate towards the path in life that allows me to play in the mountains and sleep under the stars as much as possible.

I was born in Hawaii in 1985 and have been in and around the ocean all my life. My father is a commercial photographer who helped me find my love and passion for shooting in the ocean. Working as a staff photographer for Surfer Magazine for the past five years has allowed me to travel to many exotic locations such as Tahiti, Rapa Nui and Indonesia to name just a few.

Being in the water is my specialty, shooting mainly heavy and large waves with shallow reefs. I have a passion to show people a world they have never seen before, from a perspective that is almost inconceivable. I try to bring the viewers into my images and make them feel as if they’re right there alongside me in the world's most famous surf breaks.

The thing I really love about surf photography is that you can never recreate the exact same wave. If you are not in the right position or have the right exposure as it comes in, there is no option to reshoot like in other sports. You need to be prepared, aware and know what image you want to capture.

I grew up in Vienna and still live there. I first got in touch with photography at the age of 10 when my father bought me my first camera. It was a Polaroid so I could see instantly how my photo turned out, and I was fascinated by the way the photo developed by itself. This fascination has kept growing ever since then.

I got my first SLR camera, started shooting with friends who were skateboarding and snowboarding and slowly got into the business but not yet thinking of a career in photography. Then I started shooting for the company Powderstorm, which accompanied all the big snowboard events in Austria and I had to get my trade certificate to be able to legally write invoices. That was in 2001 and my career as a freelance photographer began!

Over the past 15 years I’ve always tried to be as creative as possible and to let my passion and work speak for myself. I’ve generated good relationships with clients like Völkl Snowboards, SP-United, Sport Scheck and many more who appreciate my style of work. I am very thankful for this kind of life and I hope to continue like this for a long time – traveling, shooting and evolving!

My name is Olaf Pignataro, I was born in France, and later moved to Germany and Italy. I now live in London, UK. As a teenager I skated all the time, switching to BMX later in my twenties. On those two small wheels I wasn't progressing that much. I was helping a couple of friends with a BMX zine and I began spending more time taking photos of other riders than riding myself. After a while, I completely gave up my ambitions in BMX riding and focused on my photography career.

I feel comfortable shooting all kinds of sports, no matter if it’s board sports or motorsports, aerobatics or sailing. But in all these years I have remained committed to BMX because, photographically speaking, it offers endless variables.

Thanks to my job, I have had the opportunity to travel the world and work with the most amazing athletes around. I have had the chance to get to know their personalities and witness their successes and defeats and the joy and pain that come with any sport.

I am an adventure sports photographer based in Mammoth Lakes, CA. As a participant in a lot of the sports I photograph, I try to capture an image through the athlete’s perspective, instead of the spectators’ view. My goal is to give people an intimate view of the cutting edge of adventure sports.

I specialize in adventure sports with an emphasis on skiing, and love traveling to exotic locations throughout the world experiencing different cultures, and photographing in remote mountain ranges.

My images have appeared in advertising and promotional campaigns for Red Bull, San Disk, ESPN, Patagonia, Black Diamond, Lululemon, Oakley and many other outdoor brands. I am senior photographer for Powder Magazine, a San Disk Extreme Team member, Fstop Global Pro, Lululemon Elite Ambassador and have also been published in Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, Outside, Men’s Journal and a variety of other publications and newspapers throughout the world.

I discovered photography at the age of 14, when my father reluctantly let me borrow his beloved Nikon FM2 for my first trip to Southern Patagonia with some friends. It was then that I came across the two passions that would inexorably define my future: Patagonia and photography.

I have been living with my family in San Carlos de Bariloche in the Argentinean Patagonia since 2002. It's in these woods, mountains and lakes where I have been doing most of my freelance professional photography since 1998. I love snowboarding and mountaineering.

I’ve been working on advertising campaigns of different brands and collaborate with many graphic media productions associated with sports. I belong to the generation of photographers who had to face the transition from analog to digital photography but I am a big fan of digital photography and its endless possibilities.

I am an Australian cave diver who enjoys the challenge of capturing cave exploration as it happens. I move between dry caves and the weightless underwater world, taking images to share the underground sights with those who never leave the sunlight.

I’m based in Melbourne and have taken photos in underwater caves in every state in Australia. My portfolio spans huge blue tunnels in the West Australian desert, through sunny sinkholes in South Australian farmland to muddy streamway caves on the East Coast of the continent. Following in my cave diving parent's footsteps I have contributed to significant exploration projects both in Australia and overseas. My photos have been published in major Australian newspapers and National Geographic Magazine as well as caving and diving magazines.

I have been cave diving for a decade. Along the way I have won several photo competitions and enjoy giving presentations about the challenges and satisfaction of photography in extreme environments.

I am an action sports photographer and commercial cinematographer based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Focusing on wakeboarding and snowboarding, I strive to create something new and unique every time I shoot. This often means implementing new lighting techniques as well as working with athletes to think of new creative ways to showcase their sports. This has led to projects involving a giant rail carved out of ice, snowboarding in a corn field and sending wakeskaters through a field of cranberries.

I grew up in southern Minnesota where I spent my youth wakeboarding and snowboarding. This quickly became a transition from participating to documenting once I got a camera in my hands. Because of the limited resources in the area for these sports, we had to adapt to other ways of riding.  Urban snowboarding quickly became a common subject of mine, as well as an early adaptation of winch riding in both wakeboarding and wakeskating. Once we started using the winch, it became clear that the doors were open to a new world of possibilities. I found this to be a refreshing look at the sport.

When not shooting action sports, I work as a commercial director/cinematographer, shooting a wide variety of work for television and the web. While shooting projects with larger budgets and bigger resources has its benefits, I often find that standing waist deep in water or snow trying to capture the perfect shot can be just as rewarding.

At the age of 12, I bought my first BMX bike with money I had earned washing dishes at a cake bakery. That bike was the match that sparked the revolution of my life. BMX has transformed my view of the world and how I want to spend my time. I spent most of my childhood building dirt jumps in my parents’ backyard in Michigan.

My older brother Beeler started taking photographs of my friends and me riding with my father's old 35mm. After a high school darkroom class, I bought my first 35mm. Not really grasping its full potential for several years, I was just a casual shooter.

With time my desire to document only grew stronger. The more I saw things vanish from my life, the more I felt compelled to make images. Life is a special experience, and being able to capture it has grown very important to me.

I enjoy using natural light to photograph. I find working with the available light "keeps my eyes open" and makes for more unique images, when the sun is being kind. My goal is to document riders in their natural form, not to create something that would never have happened. Candid photos are always the strongest in my opinion. I continue to ride, build and photograph in Denver, Colorado. 

Born and raised in Bled, Slovenia, I started as an amateur photographer at the age of 17. Fascinated by what could be done with different cameras, lenses and film, I gained knowledge really fast and soon realized that this could be my dream job someday. At the age of 23 I started working as a professional photographer.

Since 2005 I have been shooting for Red Bull, traveling the world and taking photos of the world's best athletes. I am a team member of Limex Images, a Getty Images contributor, covering different sports events for them. I also work with some leading sport companies and take photos for their advertising campaigns.

My photos have appeared in the world’s most prestigious magazines, such as Outside, L’Equipe, ESPN. I am also a Canon Explorer and F-Stop Global Icon. In 2014 I was the winner of the wings category in Red Bull Illume, and am a multiple winner of the Slovenian press photo award.

My camera has been a gateway to experience the world, which I take full advantage of. After 12 years of riding BMX I started photographing the action, which greatly reduced my exposure to bodily injury. The camera and I instantly formed an unbreakable bond. From these beginnings I quickly rose to a senior contributor at DIG Magazine, the most influential and respected BMX action and culture outlet in the world as well as a member of Red Bull Photography.

While pursuing BMX work, I found myself shooting friends and musicians which soon grew into a new and equally passionate body of work. Though my images cover different realms, my imbedded vision remains consistent no matter what the subject matter.

I can’t stay still for very long, and it shows in my work. I prefer cold brew coffee over French press, the rewards of cooking over eating out, and plane tickets over possessions, with the one exception of my bicycle.

I’m not really good at painting or singing, so I have chosen photography as a way to express myself! And this is exactly what drives me – trying to give other people a glimpse of how I see the world, trying to walk the thin line that combines documentary and fine art photography.

Born and raised in southern Bavaria and based in Munich, I fell in love with mountains, snow and nature in my very early years. I found my passion in photography to share that love and point of view with others and am always looking around every corner to find new impressions and inspirations for my work.

I was working on a building site with my Dad before deciding the building industry was not for me. Why do something you don't love?

Coming from a BMX background I had always collected the magazines and was fascinated by the images that were on the pages, always questioning how they were created. This sparked my desire to focus on shooting photos of BMX as well as just riding one.

Eventually I was lucky enough to have some of my photographs published in the magazines I collected all those years ago. This became more frequent and bit by bit I was finding myself being sent away on trips to document the riding of some of the best riders in the world. Fast forward to the present day and I am still fortunate enough to be going away and shooting with these riders and having my work published in various outlets, one of them being a print magazine called Endless, which I am a senior photographer for.

I am an action and adventure sports photographer currently based out of Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. Though I grew up in Calgary, Alberta and spent the first 23 years of my life there, I always knew I would end up in BC.

Since I first got into action sports I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of for the rest of my life – the culture, industry, and lifestyle. Mountain biking eventually led me to taking photos and video of the sport and everything that came with it. A goal of mine has always been to make the viewer feel as if they were part of the action themselves. If a viewer can imagine themselves in the photograph or it inspires them to get outside, then I have done my job.

My name is Alex Voyer, I am 37 and I live in Paris, France. I was born near the sea in the Pacific Ocean and now I am a freediving instructor in a pool, but I try to spend all my spare time and holidays traveling around the world, looking for ocean creatures.

All the photos are made on a single breath of air – I don’t use oxygen tanks – with natural light. I am training almost everyday to be in shape for when I meet these creatures. Taking photographs, practicing freediving and studying the behavior of the animals all go hand-in-hand for me.

We are used to seeing images of humans’ destructive effect on nature, but in my photos, I try to show that we can be part of nature!

My name is Sebastián Villegas and I live in Medellín, Colombia. I took up photography when I was 14-years-old, capturing moments of my friends riding their bikes with the camera I got as a present from my mom. Within a few months, I started to get professional jobs as a photographer. From that moment, I realized that photography was something I wanted to do for a living.

After a trip to the Amazon, my photographic interest in sports became mixed with one in nature. I realized that I had a strong connection with the places and animals I visited there, sort of like they knew when I was going to portrait them. After I came back the engagement department from my school contacted me so my pictures could be shown in the school’s art gallery for a week.

Nowadays, I work as an independent photographer for both commercial and sports brands. My photographic style throughout the years has been in constant change, but always keeping in mind that I must have a previous relationship with, and knowledge of, the person or place that is on the other side of the camera.

I come from a city in the Philippines best known for its waterfalls, but these days I find myself treading a different body of water – surf. In 2015, I packed up my life and headed to Siargao, the country’s surf capital, with what seemed like nothing. A few shirts, boardies, fins, laptop, a DSLR, and a GoPro. Essentially, it was all I needed to get started.

My background is in landscape, travel, and documentary photography and I am no stranger to capturing beauty from behind the lens. But it was my combined passion for surfing and photography that made me dive headfirst into the country’s best waves.

A year on, I dare not say it, but I’m starting to build a career for myself. I’m working with (and learning from) top class watermen, photographing surf and lifestyle for local surf brands and running a cafe-gallery aptly called ‘Shaka Siargao’. I owe this island and everyone on it my dream. It’s the only way I know how to give back. My dedication I hope is evident in my work which tries to embody the laid-back vibe of the island I feel I owe so much.

I have been a photographer for nine years, and in the spring of 2014 I graduated from Brooks Institute with a Bachelors of Fine Art, specializing in outdoor adventure commercial advertising. I was previously a photo editor for Chris Burkard and interned before that at Corey Rich Productions.

I don't necessarily refer to myself as a photographer but more as an image creator. The camera is just one of many tools to bring the ideas in my head to paper. I strive to not just create pictures, but to create images that really engage the viewer, to leave them saying ‘wow’.

I strive for innovation and exploration every time I go out to shoot and believe that in order to create amazing images there first needs to be an idea or inspiration. The vastness and pure awe of Mother Nature always inspires me to create amazing imagery. My goal as a photographer is to share my experiences and to hopefully inspire the next generation.

I’m Oscar Carrascosa, when I was a child the only thing I wanted, like kids, was to follow around my older brother. So at only 11-years-old I begged my father for a camera and after months of insistence, I got one! A Práktica MTL.

From that moment I devoted myself to following my brother and taking photos the whole time. This introduced me to a new world of sensations and every new discovery led me closer to my future career.

For many years I dedicated myself to photography, developing in black and white, learning to control the light, the filters and the times in a special form. I fell for analogue photography, but a new way was opened for me up with digital photography. I did not believe the quantity of possibilities that were possible! This began a new stage for me, a professional stage.

In any professional career there are moments that change your life. One of the moments that changed mine, and that made my career take off, was in 2004 when I had the honour of photographing the presentation of the Red Bull car for the Dakar 2005.

From this moment I have not stopped growing as photographer, and today I work with the best brands in the world - Red Bull, Nike, BWIN and Volkswagen. In addition I share this passion with my twin brother Jose Luis and with him I teach photography classes. At 40-years-old I feel lucky to have experienced so much thanks to my camera.

I live and work in São Paulo. Since 2010 my photographic work has explored the position of my own body in relation to the architecture and landscape of urban centers. I prefer symbolic and modernist constructions.

A former professional skateboarder and self-taught photographer, I like to portray myself in movement, capturing the climax of maneuvers within previously planned compositions, using a remote control to shoot the camera. My performative accuracy goes sometimes in harmony, sometimes in disarray, with architectural forms, resulting in geometric images, drawn by a magnificent play of light and shadows.

I shoot mainly in black and white, making single prints. I’ve twice been the recipient of the Banco do Espírito Santo/Shopping Iguatemi Acquisition Award (2012-2013) and once the recipient of the MASP Pirelli Acquisition Award (2013).

Recent exhibitions include Deslize (Rio Art Museum – MAR, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2013-2014), Love and Hate to Lygia Clark (Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2013-2014), Photo Biennial MASP (São Paulo Art Museum – MASP, São Paulo, Brazil, 2013), and Arte Contemporânea Brasileira (Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012). I had my first solo exhibition, AUTOCONTROLE, at LOGO gallery, in June 2014, in São Paulo.

I live in a small town called Esher just outside of London. I started photography when I was around 16 years old, just taking photos of my friends while out riding in and around London.

My camera started collecting dust when I had to get a full time job and eventually it became super hard to find time and to get motivated to shoot. It wasn’t until 2014 that I decided to seize an opportunity that came to me and commit 100% into pursuing photography full-time.

Photography is my passion as well as BMX. When it comes to BMX trips abroad with a dope crew I like the fact you have no idea what sort of photos you will be shooting, as it's all mostly freestyled when going to a country you have never been to.

Nowadays, I am using most of my time working on my own magazine called 'Endless' that I started in November 2015.

I'm an amateur photographer who divides his time equally between New Zealand and the UK. I've been lugging a camera around with me for six years now but I've been riding a BMX for well over 30 years, so that was always going to be a natural starting point for my photography.

Sometimes it takes more than just a lens attached to a camera to realize an image as seen through the prism of the mind’s eye. That's where my interest in photo realistic compositing and manipulation was born from. Combining action sports photography with manipulation is always a delicate dance, as I know only too well from my many failures at connecting with my target audience. But you should know I'm a tenacious individual, I wont quit till I've bent your world to fit my vision! Or maybe I'll just keep climbing mountains and taking pictures of sunsets.

There are two things without which I can’t imagine my life. First is movement and the second is photography.

It all started when I was about 13 or 14 years old, when my friends and I started to explore an abandoned building in the area. We would play tag and other games, watch sunsets on the roof and we would sometimes set up a campfire there at night. It may sound funny, but it was then that my acquaintance with parkour and photography really began.

After all, what could be better than taking a parent’s old camera, climbing to the roof and taking a picture heroically standing over a precipice on a thin horizontal bar with a sunset as my background?

I have developed this passion to this day, turning it from a hobby to a speciality. Gradually technology updated and with it I gained skills and experience in photography. Now I'm 25, but I'm still the same 14-year-old kid who jumps on the roofs, pipes and railings and takes pictures of my friends and I.

I consider myself an extreme photographer, because my parkour skills allow me to be in the places ordinary people can’t reach. Aside from taking parkour-related pictures I love to photograph other sports, as well as portraits, landscapes, cities, architecture and animals. I’m always happy to try something new – except weddings!

Sometimes it’s really hard but I think people should do exactly what they love the most and always follow their dreams.

I’m a Netherlands-based adventure photographer and for the last two years I have been taking photography a bit more seriously and have started working as a freelance photographer. It’s a bit ironic in a country with no mountains, but as well as working as a photographer, I have a full time job at the Dutch Mountain Federation.

I like adventure sports and if possible I try to combine this with my passion for photography. Creating inspiring images for clients and being in places others cannot reach is something that brings a smile to my face. I like to push myself to the edge, sometimes literally, but always with my camera close at hand.

To me, there is nothing better than to spend time in the mountains or in the ocean, always in search of little adventures that give me the opportunity to come home with unique images.

My name is Balázs Pálfi. I’m a 27-year-old photographer from Hungary. I bought my first camera in 2004, when I was 16-years-old. When I finished high school I knew that I wanted to be a photographer. As I didn’t have the chance to study photography at university, I had to practice and acquire knowledge on my own.

After a lot of work and time spent practicing, slowly I got my first contracts. Now I work as a freelance photographer for online and print magazines. Mainly I take photos of athletes, shoot portraits and classical documentary photos.

As I’ve skateboarded since the age of nine, my main interest is focused on extreme sports. That’s why I’d rather choose to photograph outdoor events and dynamic photo shoots.

I am a Sicilian photographer and filmmaker. I have been based in Italy, Cyprus and London working as a freelance photographer and commercial and photography teacher. I am specialized in travel, sport, portrait and story-telling (documentary / social photography); conveying powerful pictures embedded with my passion and commitment to the subject.

I like to consider myself an ‘out there’ nomadic photographer, expert in outdoor activities (hiking, climbing, mountaineering, trekking) with the particular talent of adapting to any situation and environment creating strong connections with the subjects of my photography .

I graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Macerata, Italy – specialising in Multimedia communication and I obtained a Master Degree (MA) in Photojournalism and Documentary photography from the London College of Communication (LCC – UAL).

I love photography and believe that it allows me to discover places and people in a very different way. I combine photography with the activities I do such as traveling, climbing and sports in general, which has allowed me to merge my passion and work in a lasting way.

I am an action and wedding photographer from the Czech Republic. I love new technologies, places and ideas. Working with a team of the best people is the way to live this awesome life. Recently I started working as a photography lecturer for Fujifilm, which gives me the chance to share my experience with others. My inspiration is people and their freedom of movement!

The journey of many photographers starts the same. You get injured but you feel like you don't want to give up your hobby. I am no exception. Around six years back I had a serious injury while snowboarding. Without realizing it at the time, the new era of my life had begun.

After some time I got back to sport but this time as a photographer. Thanks to my knowledge I know what is expected from different tricks and how they should be executed which means I am able to capture the perfect moment and enjoy it as much.

There are unlimited options to express yourself. While taking a picture you can be relaxed and on different occasions you can experience some serious adrenaline. Photography gives you everything. I would like to pay tribute to all who were involved in developing the photography to give us the chance to snap the important moments in our lives just with one click.

I was born in a small village in Val di Fiemme, in the midst of the Dolomites, in 1990 – I grew up with a passion for mountain sports and became a lover of extreme adventures and hard conditions.

I started photography in 2007 when I was 17. For four years I covered football, volleyball, alpine ski and some other small assignments. As my experience, my gear and my skills grew, I got bigger and bigger jobs, specializing in outdoor photography, lifestyle and commercial shoots.

In 2010 I began participating in photo contests. I won a national prize, I've been selected into the top 10 of the Digital Camera Photographer of the Year award in two categories with four different pictures. I also came third twice at the International Photo Annual Award and have been a finalist in the Sony World Photography Awards. Since that time I started a partnership with Sony for the UNITED project.

Runner, climber, skier, surfer and of course, artist, I’m able to bring action and movement in every shot, even in studio and commercials. Since 2014 I’ve also started video and film projects but always with my own style.

My name is Ryan Allan. I grew up in a small town called Grimsby in Ontario, Canada. It was during my teens in that small town I discovered the joy of photographing my friends skateboarding.

My father was a budding photographer and after ‘borrowing’ his gear and learning the ropes I found joy in the medium.

Years later I founded SBC Skateboard Magazine in Toronto, Canada and it went on to be a major player in the skateboard industry. I now live in Southern California and photograph skateboarding alongside commercial and editorial fashion and lifestyle.

My name is Mike Yoshida. I am a photographer and grew up in Homer, Alaska. I have relocated to Bellingham, Washington and also spend quite a bit of time in California and traveling.

I started photography at a young age when a skateboarding injury left me on crutches for several months. During my healing time I realized that photography was something that I truly enjoyed.

When I fully healed up, I ended up moving to the mountains to pursue my love for the outdoors and snowboarding. This is when I realized I could fuse the two things that I loved the most: snowboarding and photography.

I moved on to spend my summers at Mt Hood shooting for the snowboard camps there, and soon after landed a gig with K2 Snowboards as a staff photographer.

I ended up working with K2 for four years, and moved on to work for Snowboarder Magazine as an associate photo editor, and nowadays I also help manage their instagram account.

I am 36 and I live in a small town in the west Italian Alps. I started photography in 2004 when I was 24 and I began for one reason: I was an employee of a graphic designer for printed paper media and was often looking for high-res pictures to put in my work and for this reason only I decided to buy my first camera.

For me editing was not the real problem because I was already a Photoshop user, the real problem was the use of the camera. I started to study by myself by night and in my free time because I was very curious and I discovered a real passion.

After a lot of time spent with my camera and with some real clients I resigned from my then job in 2012 and started my career as a freelance, always with an eye on my other passion: outdoor sports.

Now, after four years my job works fine, I work for some of the best athletes and brands in outdoor sports and I’m very happy, seriously happy!

I started photography in 2010 after an accident in which I spent 12 hours deep in the New Zealand bush with a dislocated shoulder. We had just gone heli-kayaking on the Kokotai river on South Island. About half way through the run I got stuck in a hole and my shoulder popped. We didn’t manage to get it back in so two of my friends went to get rescue, and one stayed with me.

After getting winched out (yes, it was painful!) and two shots of morphine, the doctor told me I wouldn’t be able to kayak anymore, the nerve damage was too big after 12 hours of being dislocated.

I only had kayaking in my life – no degree, no jobs on the side, so I started to freak out about what life was going to be. I had saved up a bit of money, so I went and bought my first camera, started to film and take photos of my friends kayaking. A few months later, after a lot of hard work, my shoulder was back to being normal, I did the kayak Slalom World Championships in Slovenia and I’d go out shooting whenever I wasn’t training or racing.

Now filming and photography has allowed me to travel to some of the most remote places on earth, to document a sport that has been with me since I was seven.

My name is Viktor Lyagushkin and I am based in Moscow. Everything important in my life has happened incidentally. For 20 years I’ve worked in magazines as a designer, journalist and photographer.

I became a professional photographer in 1998. It happened that our staff photographer was busy and the editorial office had to send me as photographer. It was the beginning. Then, just by chance, I began to dive and almost casually passed technical diving courses. From 2003 I started to use an underwater camera.

For me it would be ideal if the entire world was plunged into darkness, so I could paint it again, illuminating it with flashes according to my taste, and people would see the world in a new way.

I am fascinated with the moment when a person overcomes circumstances or oneself and become different.

From 2011 I have been a contributor for National Geographic Magazine. I am a Nikon ambassador and Subal Pro Team member.

I'm a French guy who lives in Andorra. I’ve always said I'm lucky when the first shot is good. But this is normal if your first camera was the old parental Yashica from the 70s!

After working in the snowboard industry, I was chief editor for a French online MTB magazine. It was a pretty cool experience, working with the best French riders was so sweet and easy.

Now, I'm working for a bike company, in the marketing department. It's so cool to shoot just for fun and only on exciting projects. One more time, I'm lucky.

The most interesting part of a job in mountain biking photography is working with talented people. Every year, a young ripper is coming through and pushing everyone to work harder. This is what I'm trying to do, without pressure and discreetly.

The most interesting aspect of a sports picture is the action, the right action in the right place with good light. This specific moment is impossible to duplicate, the best picture is often the first one, or second, with natural attitude and the lucky time. Always lucky.

I'm so proud to be in the Red Bull Illume contest and I'm hoping you enjoy all of the amazing photos this contest highlights.

Photography is my way to explore the world and to show people what they cannot see. When I started to dance 16 years ago I tried various forms of self-expression in the art. I came to the photography when I started to shoot travels of my breakdance crew but it was just for fun.

Later, at the age of 18, I left my hometown, a small Siberian city called Barnaul and headed to the cultural capital of Russia. Saint-Petersburg determined my further evolution in photography but until 2013 it was still just a hobby.

That was revolutionary year for me. I’d never traveled and shot as much during one year: Finland, Germany, Ukraine, Belarus and more than 10 cities in different corners of Russia. I stopped my advertising career and concentrated on photography. The next important step was to start shooting for Red Bull, which gave me even more opportunities to fulfill my potential.

I was born and live in Munich but I have a Hungarian surname in case you’re wondering. After finishing my photography education around 2001 I started working for a German snowboard magazine (MBM). Besides taking pictures of my favorite sport I learned how to edit, design and publish a print magazine. It was a great five years for sure!

Besides that I started to do my own wakeboarding magazine (Wakeboarder Europe Magazine) around 2005. But unluckily we had to stop publishing after a couple of years. Nevertheless I still had the passion for wakeboarding and really love to shoot it.

Then I moved on to a leading high-end image editing studio for almost two years. I think that improved my Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator skills considerably.

Since 2010 I have been a freelance photographer for sports, advertising and fashion. I specialize in watersports but love snow as well! My awesome long-time clients include ION (Boards&More), Rixen, TSG, Red Bull and Starelation.

I got into photography when I got my first camera at the age of six. I started my education in photography at the Höhere Graphische, Vienna. In addition to my art-degree at the school of Friedl Kubelka I also worked for the photo agency Anzenberger.

I never imagined myself to be an outdoors and sports photographer until I started climbing myself at 22. Since then I have been in a constant quest for the most interesting light and atmospheric conditions to experience moments of beauty, drama and, above all, intensity.

Now my images are used in catalogues for international companies such as Salewa, Jack Wolfskin, Ice Peak and Edelrid, and are featured regularly in magazines throughout the world.

My chief focus in photography is outdoor sports such as climbing, skiing, canyoning, paragliding, base jumping, kayaking etc. I like to call my individual style ‘dynamic photography’ which is my way of expressing the constant tensions between the activity I am shooting, the naturalness of the environment and the originality I bring to my images.

I’m based in Margaret River, Western Australia with my beautiful wife Catherine and three kids Kalani, Tavian and Ayla.

I am an ex-fireman by trade, and my journey into surf photography started 15 years ago when I injured my knee surfing. Instead of sitting on the couch for three months I picked up a camera and spent the days at the beach shooting friends. That injury transformed my life, a passion for photography was born and now I love to capture the beauty of the sea.

My main focus over the past seven years has been to steer clear of the crowds, explore the rugged Western Australian coastline, swim into some of the heaviest waves imaginable and push my photographic boundaries in waves of consequence. I have moved away from capturing every single moment, and now I'm just trying to get that one moment that's challenging to me.

So that means swimming right into impact zone, my whole life revolves around that journey; what I eat, how I breathe and how I train.

I was born in Germany in 1994 and started photography when I was 14-years-old. I took a small compact camera from my parents and photographed everything I was interested in. When I was 17 I bought my own camera equipment and started working for a running and triathlon magazine. In 2013 I started an apprenticeship as a photographer in a photo studio in Rottweil, Germany.

In my free time I ride my downhill bike through the Black Forest in southern Germany. My interests in BMX and skateboarding started during my apprenticeship. My roommates got me motivated to start taking pictures of them. We went on small trips to local skateparks with huge success.

The fascinating thing about sport photography is that sometimes you have one chance to capture the moment in a fraction of a second, because it can't always be repeated. For me, photography is more than a job, it's my passion and I want to produce the best quality images I can.

I began shooting action sports in 2002 in Minnesota where I was born and raised. I tried sneaking my way into an Academy Snowboard camp at Wild Mountain, MN using photography as the method to get me in. It turned out that I ended up shooting more than snowboarding, and the passion was born. I continued shooting snowboarding from the age of 15 until the age of 25, and have been published in major magazines.

However travel from snowboarding led me to the ocean, where a new passion was sparked - a love for the surf and the ocean. I now live on the East Coast in Florida, travel, and endlessly document surfing and surf culture. I am primarily known as a water photographer recognized for unique angles with crisp, critical focal points. I’ll swim all day everyday if there’s enough surf to perform on.

My images can be found in features with Surfing Magazine, Surfer Magazine, Surfline, Six Magazine, Eastern Surf Magazine and many more publications.

I am a freelance photographer living out of my suitcase and camera bag. I’m rarely in the same place for more than a week or two.

I grew up in San Jose, California and have been based out of San Francisco and Los Angeles in the past. Photography was just something we did. As a kid, if we got bored we would run outside, dress up, and take photos of each other. It is what we did for fun, it’s still what I do for fun.

In college I started assisting commercial photographers in the Bay Area and I was applying what I was learning to my friends, who were all musicians. Through platforms on social media more people began to see the images we were creating and more bands began to hit me up for shoots and I found myself touring the USA documenting bands. It was amazing.

I believe a quarter life crisis made me feel like I needed to settle down in one place and be ‘successful’ and I ended up in LA. But really it was just a means for a new introduction into the parkour and freerunning world. It wasn't long until I was back living life on the road in search of the next destination and location to play with. The need to settle down is long gone.

For 10 years I have worked as a professional photographer in the field of action sports, outdoors, fashion and people photography. My passion is climbing and I’ve traveled a lot around the world, so it made sense to combine everything together: climbing, traveling, photography – and make a living out of it.

As a climber I’m fascinated by all disciplines of the sport and have climbed and photographed all over Europe and the Alps, Morocco, Asia, Peru and of course the big walls of Yosemite. The location that has the biggest place in my heart is my home crag, Germany’s Frankenjura.

My goal is to tell individual stories in the most professional way. However, ultimately the key to success for every shot is to be at the right place, at the right time and with the right people. I like to make the people around me feel relaxed and comfortable, then wait for those special moments. For me photography is not about using expensive gear or complex techniques, it’s about capturing the real moments and emotions. Ideally, the subjects don’t even realize that they are being shot. Finding these moments – delving deeper into people’s true selves, that is my goal.

I was born and raised in the city of Munich, Germany. As soon as I finished school I wanted nothing else but to become a hang and paragliding pilot. So I started working as a bicycle messenger in the wintertime and took all the money to fly in summer. I used to live in a VW bus in the summer (I still have it!) and drove from one competition to another.

I did outdoor photography in my youth. With freeflight photography it became professional. I fixed huge camera mounts on my hang glider to capture my personal adventures as a pilot. Suddenly I had a front page in Germany's biggest freeflight magazine. This was when I noticed I could really make a job out of the thing I loved to do. Nowadays I'm specialized in air to air photography. I still love the bird’s-eye view, it still makes me feel humble to discover the planet from above.

For my photographs, I'm looking for sceneries that put the pilot and his wing in places that look threatening (some of them are!). It gives an interesting contrast to the peaceful looking paraglider. And the more exciting it is to shoot, the more fun it generally is.

I am a professional photographer based in the urban jungle of Vienna, but you’re more likely to find me in the wild outdoors of the world. My photographic origins date way back to an analog era at the turn of the millennium. I have always been drawn to action and out-door adventures of all kinds and found that photography was the best way to keep me in the heart of this fascinating lifestyle.

I have intensively studied the technical and conceptual dimensions of photography and am self taught as well as in various professional educational programs. After working as a freelance photographer be-side my job as post-doctoral research fellow, I finally decided to quit my academic career and follow my passion full time.

My anthropologic background allows me to get a different angle on my projects and proves to be a useful tool for profound editorial sto-ries for different clients. Besides commercial shootings, reportage work is also one of my favorite fields of photography. A personal photographic long-term project is the exploration of urban adventures and the adaption of the public spaces through adventure sports.

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with photography as if it had happened yesterday. It was on a bike trip in Norway in 1997. At the time, it wasn’t just love there was also frustration. Frustration with the fact I couldn’t figure out photography, which isn’t all that different from a new love.

I only had an old point and shoot camera with no zoom and next to no experience. Seeing these beautiful rugged mountains, waterfalls, and fjords while not being able to capture them the way I saw it drove me nuts but also started a new journey.

Originally from Slovakia, I have been living in Whistler, BC since 2001 and it is here in these mountains and valleys I do most of my work. I met my partner here, Steve Storey, who is in most of my action and adventure photos as an athlete. We make a great team and work together on our travel and adventure projects. It’s where some of my favorite images have been created. Mountain biking has always been my niche but more recently I’ve been mixing it up with editorial, lifestyle, and commercial photography.

I’m an Australian adventure photographer (and occasional journalist). It’s not as glamorous as it seems although chances are if you drop me an email you’ll get an out of office auto reply that says I’m heli-skiing in New Zealand or trekking in Patagonia.

I’m one of seven Nikon Ambassadors in Australia, am sponsored by Elinchrom and Lowepro and regularly travel to all corners of the world photographing with Nitro Circus.

I like to claim that all I do is ‘press a button’ but actually it’s the challenge to create impactful imagery that really drives me. I photograph cool people, in cool places, doing cool things but it’s not always as exhilarating as it seems and I spend half my life suffering behind athletes.

In my downtime I enjoy surfing and mountain biking along Sydney’s Northern beaches and can be spied drinking café lattes on the beachfront when I should be editing photos.

I'm an accidental photographer really. I was supposed to finish my Master's degree in Marine biology then go on to a doctorate program but somewhere along the way my little hobby of snapping photos of my friends morphed into pursuing photography as a career – God cracked open the door, then I kicked it open you could say.

I started submitting slides to the photo editors at Surfing, Surfer, and TransWorld. Probably in large part because I was relentless in my phone calls and attempts to improve – and there were not many others doing the same from the East Coast circa 2000 – they took the time to help me. I am forever indebted to Larry ‘Flame’ Moore, Peter Taras, Richard ‘Mez’ Meseroll and Jason Murray for giving me a chance to prove myself.

My talent and creativity as a photographer has since taken me all over the globe and I’ve produced photo shoots in over 40 countries. My work has been commissioned by the likes of Surfing Magazine, NBC, CNN, Globe International, CBS, ABC and Fox.

I like to get knee-deep into my craft, whether that’s shooting an epic surf image or capturing the adventures on a spearfishing trip, I hope to captivate my audiences with every beautiful shot. I seek to capture images that inspire the viewer and help them see a perspective that might be new to them or put them in the place of the athlete to give them a better understanding or enjoyment of that moment.

It is somewhat of a miracle that I ever fell in love with photography. I have one too many childhood memories of forcing a smile as my mother fumbled with her SLR snapping family photographs. As it turns out, my mother’s inefficiencies behind the camera failed to deter me and I now realize she had this desire to capture these moments in an everlasting medium.

By 2008 I was partway through a journalism degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder. CU did not offer photojournalism degrees, but I was able to take a number of classes from the adjunct professor and New York Times photojournalist, Kevin Moloney. At 20, he had a profound impact on my life.

I spent the first couple years of my career tackling any job I could get. I shot apartment interiors, covered 5k races, and photographed way too many 12-hour-long dance competitions. Perhaps more important than this slew of crappy assignments was my time spent assisting for a local photographer, Jamie Kripke who was more than generous with his time, patience and guidance.

Today, I focus primarily on commercial and editorial photography in the world of adventure and active lifestyle and have been fortunate to create images for brands such as The North Face, Red Bull and Adidas.

I got my first camera when I was ten. As an enthusiastic beginner I remember taking photos of nearly everything around me (whether or not it made a good photo). One day a photo I posted on an online art community was made ‘featured daily photo’ on their page. That validation got me hooked.

I started taking photos of things I loved – adventure, animals, nature, and gradually I grew in skill and confidence. I offered photography for horse shows, rodeos, and other local events. More recently, I’ve been focusing on travel and nature photography. In the past few years I’ve been published in several magazines, and I’ve won and placed in various national and international photography competitions.

Although I’m not currently working as a full time photographer, that’s my goal. I’d love to spend my days using my creativity and documenting this beautiful world. After recent travels to India and a photo safari to the Arctic, my desire to pursue professional photography has only grown.

My name is Pedro Esteves and I was born in Portugal in the year of 1976. In 2008 with a master’s degree in marketing management I started studying photography at the Portuguese Institute of Photography.

In 2010 I did a curricular internship with the photographer António Pedrosa. Then, in 2011 I took a workshop – master class of assembly and curator of photographic exhibitions.

In April 2012 I was invited to present my portfolio within the framework of ‘Chats about photography’, a presentations cycle organised by IPF and Fnac.

I specialize in landscape photography and I love the outdoors and the contact with nature.

Over the last years I have been awarded and distinguished in several photography competitions, both national and international.

I was born in Motueka, a tiny beach town on the northern tip of South Island, New Zealand. During my teens I backpacked around Australia for two years and it was during this time that I got my first camera and the passion for imagery was awakened.

Moving to Switzerland at 22 I discovered snowboarding and ended up mixing my two passions. Three or four years later I managed to make this my full time occupation although I don’t really see it as a job most of the time.

I spend winters chasing the snow with the Volcom team riders and in summer I'm on my 36ft sailboat, with the goal being to sail around the world in the next 10 years.

I'm a high school student and freelance Australian surf photographer, focused on documenting ocean-orientated action, adventure, abstract, interactions and people.

Not knowing whether I will roll out of bed and into a regular High School day or some of the most raw, dangerous and beautiful situations mother nature has to offer is what keeps me on my toes. I reckon drowning in paperwork would be the worst way to go.

My theory is that to capture the essence of action sports, you have to be in the thick of the action.

I was taken into the wilderness and packed along on adventures across the globe before I could even walk. From my home in the mountains of Montana to Antarctica, Nepal and Mongolia I have witnessed some extraordinary moments, wildlife, people and places.

Since the first photos I ever shot when I was traversing the Super Inca Trail at 15-years-old, I was hooked on the unique perspective a camera gives you to interpret the world as you see it. Since then I have been lucky enough to have more experiences in far flung corners of our planet that I ever could have imagined, and its with amazement that my camera has led me through all this.

I am captivated by the story - a single image can encapsulate a lifetime. But I don’t seek out the single image per say, more a collection of images from each of my experiences that represent my own footsteps on this planet, and through them the world as I illuminate it through my lens.

I’m a professional photographer and creative director from Australia, focusing on action sports, travel, lifestyle and fashion industries, particularly in relation to water.

I grew up around the ocean and was interested in image-making and story-telling from a young age. After studying a Bachelor of Visual Communication at Newcastle University, I worked as a freelance graphic designer and creative director for several years with some of Australia’s largest surf brands, before shifting my focus to photography.

In my short career in surf photography, I have been awarded the Nikon/Surfing Australia Surf Photo of the Year (2014), as well as being recognized as the Bodyboarding Photographer of the Year by both Le Boogie Bodyboarding Magazine and Riptide Bodyboarding Magazine (2014). I have recently worked on creative campaigns for brands including Audi Australia, Veuve Clicquot, Samsung and Lancome, as well as continuing to freelance for surfing publications.

I enjoy wide open spaces, getting outside of my comfort zone, the ocean, surfing, art, basketball, animals, new challenges, jokes and heated debates. What best defines my style and work ethic? An ability to illustrate a grand idea on a minimal and intimate scale, coupled with an adventurous and perpetually self-critical nature.

I am from Santa Cruz, CA. I started photography about eight years ago when I was in high school and I fell in love with shooting photos, deciding to make a career out of it.

After graduating I really wanted to learn as much as I could about photography. I enrolled in Brooks Photography Institute in Santa Barbara. It was a three-year program and I walked away with a Bachelors Degree in Professional Photography. It was the best thing for my career.

I currently live in Newport Beach, CA and I travel the world all year round, working as a staff photographer for Surfing Magazine, Rip Curl, and freelancing for other companies. I’m constantly on the road going on surf trips and fashion shoots etc.

I hope to continue with photography for the rest of my life. I couldn't be more stoked to turn my passion into a career. With all the new technology coming out year by year it lets us create new types of images, and endless amounts of creativity.

I was born in Lisbon in 1980, Portugal, which is where I live today. In 2003 I started my photographic career in action sports and later became a freelancer.

My career in photography developed through action sports, reportage and lifestyle. My work can be found in different brands and publications.

In 2014 I joined Red Bull Photography. My portfolio is very wide and incorporates different areas, which makes me privileged in the photography universe. I want to take my work to a bigger dimension, with new challenges and international goals.

What fascinates me in action sports is to see how athletes can turn an ordinary place into somewhere truly memorable.

I was born in 1989 and currently live in Saint Petersburg, Russia. I’ve been working as a full-time photographer since 2010.

I once sold my digital camera and bought a Nikon film camera, a decision that changed my approach to photography – I realized that using a film camera doesn’t give you the opportunity to make a mistake and you should appreciate every moment in your life, and also be able to catch it. Obviously I bought a digital camera later, but the habit to take the right shot at the right time will stay with me forever.

I’m keen on urban exploration. There's something about walking on the rooftops and in subway tunnels – you rarely get bored.

In 2013 I left work in a large telecommunication company and decided to dedicate my life to professional photography. For the last four years I've been working as a professional photojournalist for different Russian news agencies.

The genre of war photography has caught my mind and camera recently. In 2013 and 2014 I was working on a photo report of the Ukrainian revolution. Several times I’ve been in hot spots in the Donbass region of Ukraine. In 2014 and 2015 I covered the armed conflict in Syria.

As a kid growing up in Eastern Canada, I started snowboarding at the time when a lot of ski hills did not allow snowboarders. The early days of the sport were all about being loud and rebellious. The magazines and imagery surrounding snowboarding showcased a lifestyle full of attitude and adventure. I was hooked.

The glossy photos of perfect conditions and sunny days from Western Canada and USA burned into my mind: ‘Move West Young Man’. I counted the days. Eventually I made my way to Whistler, BC and worked nights so I could snowboard and start shooting photos. After a few years of trial and error shooting 35mm film on some questionable gear, some success came my way. I started working with and shooting for Snowboard Canada Magazine. A few years later I became photo editor which allowed me to shoot full time and travel. It was also an amazing experience to work with and learn from the photography legends in Canada while searching out new photographic talent at the same time.

In 2008 my dream job came along, shooting full time for DC Shoes Inc as their snowboard team photographer. I worked with riders like Devun Walsh, Iikka Backstrom, and Travis Rice, traveling all over the world chasing the best conditions. In 2016 my photography career took me in a new direction away from the mountains, but after almost 15 years as a snowboard photographer I make time to get to the mountains and shoot as much as possible.

Having received a kidney transplant following a short illness in 2007, I decided that life should be best spent doing things I enjoy. I promised myself that within a year I would get back to skiing! Less than a year later I met my now wife, a doctor and ski instructor.

With her help, I am now back skiing and enjoying life! We have since been across the world promoting organ donation with Transplant Sport UK, to places like Australia, Sweden and Argentina.

My main passion is being active, whether that be running, skiing, riding or driving. Being in a place to take in the beautiful scenery and pursue these activities is what inspires me to take more and more pictures, and I am so thankful to my donor that I am still here to do so!

I always strive to frame a photo and give it context, a story, and make sure the elements, whatever they be, work in the photo’s favour. I hope you enjoy my pictures and my story.

My name is Rasmus Kaessmann, I was born in 1979, and I’m one of those photographers who have turned their hobby into their profession.

After many years in Berlin I recently moved back to the Bavarian mountains with my wife and two kids. It’s where I grew up and where I started taking pictures of friends while rock-climbing and snowboarding.

The springboard into my profession was doing four years of freelance photo assisting. My work has vastly expanded from pure sport photography. You can see this from my list of clients which includes brands like Audi, Sony, Stihl, Opel, Vattenfall, Reebok, Red Bull, Uniroyal, Rütli-Wear - a social project fashion-label from Berlin - Neukölln, and many more. Lately, I received a bronze award at the CCA Awards with an image of the rowing Red Bull athletes, the Sieber brothers.

I also work for different magazines like the ADAC travel magazine, Playboy, Men's Health, Women’s Health and Stern magazine amongst others.

As an artist working with lens-based media I regularly undertake projects that challenge me both as a photographer and director.

My work is often influenced by concepts that include mapping, narration, exploration and science. Building on past experiences and a passion for the environment led me to set up Project Pressure, a UK-based charity that documents the world’s retreating glaciers. It combines science, art and education to depict the repercussions of climate change.

A significant body of my work is 'Hybrids', which was produced over a period of four years when I mapped peculiar hybrid cultures around the planet, such as Snow Polo in St. Moritz, Gay Rodeo in LA, Underwater Striptease in Chile and Underground Gardening in Tokyo.

I have been fortunate enough to receive grants from Arts Council England, Danish Arts Council, Getty Images, Hasselblad and The Queen of Denmark amongst others. In 1996 I was the youngest ever winner of the Scandinavian Kodak Gold Award, and in 2013 I was the recipient of the Sony World Photography Award in fashion.

I have lectured at Oxford University, The Photographers' Gallery and at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design. And I have been featured in the BBC, Wired, the Guardian, the New York Times, National Geographic, Vice, Creative Review and more.

My name is David Rodriguez and I am a Spanish amateur photographer based in paradise, Gran Canaria, the Canary Islands.

Currently I'm finishing my degree in architecture and I'm starting to do some work as a freelance photographer. Since I was a teenager photography has been important to me. I took the trouble to spend my money on cameras and because of that, my role among my friends has been to keep the memories of our youth.

I think there are two facts that influence my way of photography; my studies of architecture and the amazing landscape of my island, Gran Canaria, which is one of the most spectacular in the world.

After studying architecture my passion for photography evolved and I spent some time learning the basics and honing my technique. Now I love to walk with my camera and discover amazing places to capture. I think that my photography reflects geometry and the relationship between man and nature.

I live in a village near Amsterdam in the north of Holland, close to the North Sea and dunes; places I love to wander around.

I have always been interested in photography, but never that stoked on shooting. But when I went on a trip for several months I started shooting more and more. Back in Holland I saved up some money to buy a DSLR, and started shooting more often at my sur-roundings like the beach and became more interested in surf pho-tography.

After a while I wanted a bit more of a challenge. So I went to the Photo Academy in Amsterdam, and started to shoot film again. Shooting film gives me a lot more opportunities to experiment with developing and printing. Nowadays I only shoot film and I use all kinds of cameras from 35mm to medium and large format. At this moment I am working on a book that represents the persistence of the North Sea surfer who has to endure the ice-cold North Sea to wait for the perfect wave.

I am a photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. I began taking photos of my friends skateboarding in high school. During this time I found my passion for photography and enrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University to further my skills. While focusing more on artistic photography that came with classwork, I continued to shoot my friends skating and submit the photos to magazines. Soon I was published in both Slap and Thrasher and within a year I was asked to move to Philadelphia to shoot for Slap full time.

After several years of shooting with professional skateboarders I landed at Skateboarder Magazine where I began to do travel stories around the globe in unexpected places. These trips included the Trans Siberian Railway, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, motor biking through Vietnam, the Brazilian Amazon by boat, and visiting India’s Kumbh Mela Festival, always with a crew of skateboarders looking for the ever-elusive skate spot.

All the work producing these trips paid off more than I could have imagined with the release of my first book, Skate the World – Photographing One World of Skateboarding, was published by National Geographic. I continue to work as a freelance photographer in NYC, focusing on skateboarding locally and abroad, as well as shooting commercial lifestyle jobs and other documentary projects.

I was born in Argentina in 1982, grew up in Patagonia and then moved to Mexico where I’ve been based since 2004. Since a kid, I was always close to the adventure world; mountain biking everyday to school and later when I discovered rock climbing.

At about 15, I began experimenting with a borrowed camera while I got serious with adventure sports. In 1999, aged 19, I participated in my first adventure race and later focused on trail running (and ultra distance races), something that not only became good training, but also a good opportunity to take my camera to the most remote places. Since then, mostly self-taught and working as a photo assistant, I started my career as an adventure and action photographer.

My professional career began in 2005. During those years, I’ve photographed nu-merous adventure races, expeditions, different sports and journeys in remote places. I’ve contributed to the editorial market working with National Geographic Traveller, Runner's World, Trail Runner, Bike, the New York Times and Climbing among others. I’ve also collaborated with Red Bull, Discovery Channel, Speedo, Petzl and Mexico’s tourism board.

I was a semi-finalist at Red Bull Illume 2010 and in 2014 was selected by Red Bull to be one of 75 photographers featured in redbullphotography.com.

As a kid I had a hard time focusing. Growing up with dyslexia made reading challenging for me so most of my time in school was spent day-dreaming and drawing. I struggled with low self-esteem and always felt like the slowest kid in the classroom. My parents realized this and made what was a radical move at that time and pulled me out of public school and started homeschooling.

Being homeschooled was a fresh start for me. It gave me the time and opportunity to take my passion for art and do something with it in a practical way. Before long I was mentoring with an accomplished landscape artist Roger D Arndt. I learned color theory, composition and what it would take to survive as a full time artist. This turned out to be the most important education I could have asked for and really shaped me as the artist and photographer I am today.

Becoming a sports photographer happened as a natural progression for me. I had no real aspiration at the time to shoot these types of photos. But growing up in British Columbia I was surrounded by epic landscapes and people who were excited about getting out and experiencing them. My close group of friends and I have a passion for skiing and mountain biking, we starting experimenting with different photo set-ups on our adventures and that is how this addiction to getting the shot started and why I love experiencing the outdoors through the lens today.

I'm a self-taught freelance photographer, was born in 1988 and currently live in Fossano, Italy.

I love to photograph longboard in particular. With this sport you can mix incredible landscapes and the amazing energy that this action sport provides. My favorite combo is when there are bad weather conditions, riders and sick road. This is perfect!

In 2012 I began to photograph this sport following the Italian leg of the Sector9 EURoK Summer Tour. I can say that this has been my training. I photographed the Women’s World Champion Elena Corrigall and other international riders during their trip. I think in that moment my love for this sport and the lifestyle around it was born. Freedom, happiness, friendships and really sick landscapes, this is longboard for me!

Now I'm here in my awesome country and I think there are some of the best spots that I ever saw. I'm a little bit lucky because I live so close to the Alps.

I've been published in some international skateboarding magazines such as HeelSideMag, Crvis3r Skateboarding and Concrete Wave. Finally I do what I love – great landscapes, action sports and photography. What else is there to say?

Seville, southern Spain. Here I met my passion for MTB and photography. In Leogang, Austria, after a fall doing downhill training, I had to spend the next five days in a bikepark with my collarbone broken, shooting photos with my friend’s compact camera using the left hand. That, in 2007, was my first photography experience.

After the injury I switched to BMX, and in a year I had bought a Nikon D40 and a short while later a few flashes and a few triggers. I was trying to copy the greatest BMX photographers. I learned many things from the wonderful world of photography by myself, just shooting and shooting. But I focused on BMX.

Over the last four years I started to turn my passion into a profession. Currently I shoot anything that moves fast or high, whether two or four wheels. I love action sports. This passion I hope will take me all over the world!

My story of becoming a photographer started only few years ago, but it has its roots in my childhood. When I was 12, my parents took me on a trip. It wasn't just a regular family weekend, but something completely different from what a random Polish kid in the 1990s could experience. We went rock climbing. I instantly fell in love with this amazing sport and since then I had devoted every moment of my life to practicing climbing and traveling for climbing. This activity became my passion, and finally, my profession. Now it is my life.

In high school and college I had been poking around Poland, and later Europe, in search of interesting natural climbing areas. Most of them are located in national parks, or other extraordinarily beautiful places. Each time I visited magnificent mountains to climb I admired the background as well. I developed a need to capture those stunning moments, where sport, challenge and adventure meet the beauty of natural landscapes. I wanted to shoot my friends doing their life records, as well as capturing the magnificent views from the unique climbers’ perspective.

Right now I'm a professional climber. I work as a climbing teacher and coach. I'm based in Warsaw, Poland. I also work as a freelance photographer, mostly engaged in shooting climbing-related subjects. Combining my beloved hobby with my sport gives me satisfaction. Being a climbing pro, and a climbing community insider, is an opportunity for me to capture the most unique moments during training for this amazing sport.

I live in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. I fell in love with photography when I was in elementary school. My father was a photo enthusiast and he showed me how to work with cameras.

Soon after, I started chasing cats and pigeons around house for a good shot with a zoom lens. For me the results where fantastic, for example, capturing a bird in a moment of flight was something beyond my expectations. So photography and visual arts have become my true passion.

In my 20s I got my first assignments and my hobby slowly turned to my profession. I was able to buy better photo equipment and started to work for a magazine as a photographer.

Since then I have been working with major news and photo agencies in the world covering major events mostly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Currently I work as photo editor in a Bosnian weekly newspaper but I try to make time for other interesting assignments in Bosnia and abroad. Photography has taken me to beautiful places and made me meet very interesting people for which I am truly grateful and I consider this the biggest award in my photographic career.

At the age of 16 I was introduced to whitewater kayaking. The power of the river, the international kayaking community, and exploration quickly became the focal point of my life. As I learned about rivers, I realized how little we as humans know about these incredibly beautiful and sacred places. I soon became overwhelmed with the urge to document these mesmerizing landscapes: canyons, waterfalls, and pristine waterways around the world. Naturally, photography became the medium for me to share my experiences and document nature’s wonders.

Now after eight years, hundreds of rivers, and 24 countries, my passion continues to prosper just as much as it did when I took my first strokes on the rivers and captured my first images.

When I am not on the river or in the mountains, I can be found working on various commercial, editorial and conservation projects. I hope to continue on this journey and promote environmental stewardship and protection of our planet’s most precious resource, water.

I am a self-taught freelance photographer based in the centre of the Alps in Austria. After graduating as an architect I decided to take a year off and focused on action photography, primarily snowboarding. The mountains in front of my house gave me first hand experiences and allowed me to spend every day in the snow with my friends, which resulted in a quick progression of my photographic skills.

In 2011 I turned my interest in photography into a professional career. As a staff photographer at Nitro Snowboards I was assigned to shoot their athletes and to accompany them on their journeys around the world. Photography gives me the chance to travel around the globe and my goal is to capture the sport by documenting landscapes, surroundings, or structures in which the athletes find their playground.

Beside the sport, I always try to discover new genres of photography to keep my work challenging and to enhance my skills.

I was born in a small village near Bucharest, Romania. When I was 20 I came to Madrid on vacation, loved the culture, people, food and weather so much, I decided to live here for a while. Ten years have passed since then and here I am, still living in Madrid.

Since I was little I've been amazed with bicycles and photography, then one day I discovered BMX riding and everything changed. After a couple of years I started shooting video and taking photos of my friends; it felt natural from the beginning. My favorite subjects are extreme sports and lifestyle.

I’m so grateful for everything, looking back at all the adventures I’ve had, friends I've made and places I've seen thanks to my passion for photography and bikes. Currently I'm working for a photography and film studio in Madrid as a filmmaker and photographer. I can't wait to see what the future brings.

I was born in 1993 and raised in the northern suburbs of Stockholm, Sweden. Photography has always been a part of my life. My dad and his best friend used to have a darkroom and a small studio, so I grew up around cameras.

I started taking pictures back in 2009 when my dad gave me his old Canon EOS 10D. In the beginning it was a way for me to hang out with my dad and it was during this time I discovered the joy of photography.

When I started to photograph surfing it felt like home. I fell in love with it immediately. I love everything about it – the people, the smells, the sound of the waves, the environment, everything. I checked the forecast as often as I could, I didn’t want to miss a single opportunity.

I prefer shooting extreme sports, concerts and portraits. Photography has taken me to amazing places over the years and I still have a lot of places to see. I have met so many people and made new friends through this interest. And maybe most importantly, I found something I was good at.

I was born in 1987 and grew up in a Parisian suburb. In my teenage years, whether through movies or still pictures, I loved capturing the moment. At this time I used to borrow my granddad’s camera, until I could buy my own DSLR.

Passionate about skateboarding and music, I naturally started shooting them. After I tried different styles of photography, the love remained for event photography and sports.

In 2010 I started shooting for Red Bull and at many sports events and music festivals. I developed my inspirations by traveling with athletes and covering sporting events around the world.

In 2013 I created my company based in Paris, La Clef Production, which gathers photographs and videographers. Together we exchange and develop our skills. We can work on bigger projects with the support of the many brands we’re working for.

I'm just simple Russian girl. My name is Tatyana. I live in Novosibirsk, Siberia. One day I got a camera and since then I have been trying to capture every moment of the world. I try to feel and share the beauty of every day, to capture every shade of meaning hidden in the ‘now’ we live in.

Every day we do many things and can see a lot. We have different emotions and we try to solve as many problems as we can. Taking photos is my way to capture every moment. I like taking photos of the emotions people have in their everyday lives; the emotions that help you better understand someone just by looking at his or her photo. I am not a professional photographer, but photography is definitely a part of my life.

A new stage of my development as a photographer began when I started climbing and going to mountains. I like to take photos of people when they climb to the top doing their best to reach the goal. It is not easy to be a sport photographer and you must be ready at any moment. I find this genre very interesting now.

I was born in Kamchatka, in the far east of Russia. I was one of the first snowboarders there and after a while I created the Kamchatka Snowboard Association with some friends. This organization literally changed the life for many young and modern people on our peninsula. We organized many different events, contests, filmed the first Russian snowboard video – ‘White Trails’, and did photo shoots with local professional photographers.

With incredibly beautiful Kamchatka’s nature and with these shoots, I started to think about having my own camera. We also started to organize the first heliski and heliboarding riding for ourselves and for our friends on our local volcanoes from 1995.

This activity later formed the basis of what I do today – as a heliski guide with my company Helipro. From 2002 we have organized many trips into all the major places where heliskiing exists around the world.

I had my camera from the first trip and it helps to create a new format of heliski trips. Now our clients return home not only with great feelings but also a bunch of professional photos and videos. Our company has worked with most of the major film studios and companies like Brainfarm, Pirates Movie Production, Red Bull, Burton and Yes Snowboards. I really love to shoot sport, nature, travel, timelapses, panoramas, and 360s.

I’m a 25-year-old action sports photographer from Nijmegen, the Netherlands with a keen interest in light and analog film techniques. I graduated as a media-designer, studying photography and afterwards had the choice between choosing a driver's license and a camera. I chose the latter! So far it’s been an amazing decision.

I first started shooting my local BMX friends on vacations. I’ve been shooting serious-ly since 2008. I broke my elbow at the end of that year and kind of slowed down with riding and took on the filming and shooting aspect of it.

Fast forward to now and I am still enjoying it as much as I did when I got my first DSLR, except now on a way more serious and wider level, with way more traveling. These days I’m shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II, a strobist setup, Hasselblad, large format and various 35mm cameras

My name is Alexandre but most people call me by my short name Xande. I started taking pictures not so long ago. I decided to start taking pictures so I could capture climbing. I'm not a very good climber but I love the sport. I wanted to be able to share with the world all the good things that were leading me to spend entire days at climbing crags. That led me into photography.

As a photographer, I try to capture the emotion and beauty of outdoor sports. My goal is to catch breathtaking images showing nature, effort, exposure and the achievements of those dedicated athletes.

My passion for climbing led me to take it as my main focus but photography is an endless universe and I'm always open for new possibilities.

I was born in Montreal, Canada, studied architecture and cinema and started my professional photography career shooting for skate companies in the mid nineties. In 2000, I opened the first retail shop with two business partners selling exclusively freeski gear, D-Structure Proshop.

Working in the freeski scene both as a photographer and entrepreneur, I fell in love with the sport and created another unique project, the International Freeski Film Festival, iF3. It has since become an international brand and traveled to four continents.

I have now left the festival to focus 100% of my time on my first passion: photography. After specializing in skiing for the past 15 years, I’ve branched out to many other sports, the tourism industry, studio and commercial