Shooting the same event for three years in a row sometimes pushes your creativity. After three years shooting Crankworx in Les Deux Alpes on the same slopestyle course I tried to push it by analyzing how I’d been photographing the event. I discovered I’d been shooting with a lot of lenses from several viewpoints but I'd never been into the wooden bridge that was the first obstacle on the course.
After figuring out how to make it into the jump I started to play with panning and slow shutter speeds to catch the riders while they were jumping above me. I had a lot of attempts as it was practice time and it was the first feature on the course, but I have to be honest – I was looking for a single sharp shot, which at 1/13th of a second with a fisheye is already a challenging one – especially not knowing when the riders are coming!
But the fact that I was shooting in sequence mode and thanks to a touch of luck I managed to get six sharp frames exactly when Brandon Semenuk did this downside 360. I realized right when I got it that the single shot was great but going through the shots I understood that the sequence was something new and unique.