For my latest shoot for my personal project series ‘Beneath the surface’ I visited BMX flatland legend Viki Gomez in his hometown of Luxembourg. Two of my friends supported me on this shoot - photographer Rutger Pauw and filmmaker Matty Lambert.
The project started over a year ago and since then I have captured different sports and top athletes with only UV light, using special adapters from Broncolor.
I came up with the concept of having Viki pull a trick on his bike while surrounded by soap bubbles. Soap Bubbles are not fixed in form, color or lifespan and are in a way unpredictable. I thought this went hand in hand with Viki’s general mind-set and approach to his sport and character.
Viki organized a really cool, industrial looking location and thanks to the people there we had total freedom. A challenge was the darkness that is required when you are shooting only UV light. We setup a Broncolor HMI light with a Para 88 to have a really soft ambient light, giving Viki just enough sight to perform one of his most difficult tricks, and for me to pre-set my focus accordingly.
To overpower this light we had to use the UV lights at almost full power but with still enough flash duration so the action could be nicely frozen.
Timing was also crucial because as the bubbles started to vanish they created an exploding cloud of soap particles in the air and those covered Viki completely so he was not visible anymore.
Finally after two days of setting up, testing, shooting, bubbling and spinning we were able to capture the shot and the result exceeded our expectations by far.