The pressure and challenges of covering an entire event series can be super tough. From his experience of shooting at every Freeride World Tour event in the season, Red Bull Illume finalist David Carlier offers some insight and tips about what is expected of event photographers:
How do you prepare?
In order to be ready for the series, I train a lot... biking, ski touring, langlauf skating, etc. I also do a lot of mountaineering, meaning I can reach shooting locations where other photographers can’t go easily or without a mountain guide. This gives me a lot of flexibility in my job and the chance to find great shooting angles.
Tell us about a typical day…
Up very early with the first riders, I climb to the start gate with them to capture those unique moments at sunrise to then position myself in the face at a strategic location.
Then it’s 4-5 hours of intense shooting until the comp is over. After that I rush to the edit room to download photos and work on the post prod in order to extract a 30 best of photos selection in 60 minutes to dispatch to media around the world.
How do you keep a fresh eye?
People are now used to those freeriding photos with huge cliff drops and flying powder. So it’s a real challenge to always find new angles and original framing. In a regular photoshoot we normally have a full day or more to come up with a series of images.
With an event like FWT, we do not have this luxury. The riders choose their lines and most of the time I don't even know where they will come from! So I need to move fast, be able to react to any situation and keep a "fresh eye" on what is happening in order to capture that one shot that will make it in the media the next day!
How do you gear up?
Mastering my gear is obviously a very important part of the job. I shoot 90% of my images with the Nikon D800. To my eyes, the censor of that camera is by far the best out there in terms of dynamic range, color accuracy and sharpness, even if the motor is slower than on other cameras (5 frame/sec.) which doesn't bother me at all!
Check out David’s website here & visit the FWT site to see more of his epic images!
Shooting the FWT with David Carlier
Shooting the FWT with David Carlier

© David Carlier