Life In a Box - Photographing CrossFit Athletes

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“I have a good feeling about this”. That’s what I thought when I walked into a CrossFit box for the first time.
I was looking for a theme for a sports related photography project and had found it!

 

 

CrossFit has all the ingredients that I was looking for: the intensity, the interaction between people and the raw quality of the environment and the equipment that enhances the emotional charge of the images.

Also, I had a free pass to shoot, thanks to the amazing friendliness of the instructors and members at Ironbox, who have been putting up with me for the past few months!

 

I had seen (and felt) some really strong fitness programs before, but this was a whole new level, mostly because of the variety and high intensity of the workouts.

“What is CrossFit?” is answered in many articles all over the internet, including this one (in Portuguese), on the In Shape website. But I prefer to use photographs to show the dedication, the intensity, the sacrifice and the power of these athletes.

You can see more of my CrossFit photos in this gallery - Life In a Box - which will be updated as I go along.

Vanessa Pereira - The girl behind the athlete

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It was a great day, the one I met up with Vanessa for a cup of coffee to discuss “making a few pictures for her”.

Not only did the (5x) triathlon national champion give me total creative freedom, but she also agreed to let me turn this into a longer project, with several sessions in different situations, that would illustrate the girl besides the athlete. An irresistible challenge for me!

Over the next few weeks, expect to see a lot of triathlon photos both here and on my social media. So get ready!

 

Dozens of climbers light up the Matterhorn first ascent route

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This video shows what can be achieved when a company has the right vision and spares no effort in showing it. In this case, Mammut decided to prepare for the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Matterhorn’s first ascent, by creating an epic image.

The Matterhorn is one of the most famous peaks in the Alps, with 4478m, and in the photo, the red headlamps of dozens of climbers illuminate the route that the Edward Whymper expedition took back in 1865.

Btw, if you would like to have their image as your desktop wallpaper, they were nice enough to make it available here.

How to get photos from the internet (without hurting the photographers…)

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How to get photos from the internet (without hurting the photographers…)

In one way or another, we all create, reproduce and publish content on a regular basis, be it on a blog, Facebook, a forum, etc. and we need images to illustrate them.
So we can go ahead and make the image we need or we can look for it… on the internet.

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The Matrix

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“There is no spoon..."

Some places literally beg to be photographed, and this elevator at LX Factory (Lisbon) had been asking for it for a long time…

I had just finished a studio shoot with Elias for another project (if you’ve been following this blog, you guessed it - athlete’s portraits) and we decided that there was time for a few more photos, “Matrix style”!

Totally nailed it, didn’t he?…

Funny thing is that Elias is the most cheerful, less sinister person you will ever meet, which just goes to show that he is also a good actor!

 

Anatomy of a Photomontage

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"How fast do you want to go?”

 

Step 1: dig up an old (and boring!) photo taken at Marvão (Portugal)

Marvão, Portugal

Step 2: throw it into Photoshop and beat those pixels up until you squeeze the speed out of it!*

As Frederick Van Johnson, host of the This Week in Photo podcast often says “pixels were born to be punished!"

*(in this case, motion blur, noise, contrast, saturation) 

speed road

Step 3: photograph a cool biker

Biker

Step 4: join them together and… BAM!

speed bike photomontage (composite)