„In my photos, I like to show the viewers the beauty of the environment where athletes perform. I think a great location is one of the key elements for a great action picture.“ Lorenz Holder
Senad and I were on the way to a different location early in the morning, when we passed this scenic spot. We saw a sign from the street and I had some pictures in mind that I’d seen from this bridge on the internet. When we got there the sun was just above the trees and it was lighting up the full color-spectrum of the autumn leaves in a very soft way.
One thing that was a little annoying was that the lake was covered with leaves which had fallen from trees, so the reflection of the bridge in the lake was just not there. But sometimes you just need a bit of luck – I had been on a fishing trip some days before and still had my fishing-boots and a net in the car. So got the stuff and tried to clean the lake by hand. It took a while until it was almost perfectly clean – at least where it was relevant for the picture. Luckily the sun was still very soft, so we had good light for the shot.
I’d chosen a very low camera position to get an almost perfect mirrored scene on the water surface. The bridge looked like a perfect circle and the light was still very good. When Senad was on the bridge, it took us two or three tries to get the shot. There was also no more time for another try because the wind came up and the perfect reflection on the water was gone.
We jumped back to the car and drove towards our originally planned spot. It was an awesome feeling to have shot this picture with more or less pure luck. Without the sign next to the road, we would have passed one of the nicest photo scenes.
Findet fantastische Locations: Lorenz Holder aus München
Die Gewinner des weltweit größten Wettbewerbs für Action und Adventure Sportfotografie, Red Bull Illume 2016, wurden im Rahmen einer spektakulären Winner Award Ceremony in Chicago, USA, bekanntgegeben. Mit den Kategorien „Masterpiece by Yodobashi“ und „Playground“ war der Gesamtgewinner Bild zum zweiten Mal in Folge der deutsche Fotograf Lorenz Holder. Sein stimmungsvolles Bild, das den Athleten Senad Grosic mit seinem BMX auf einer Brücke in Deutschland zeigt, hat die meisten Stimmen der 53-köpfigen internationalen Jury bekommen. Zusätzlich zu seinem Gesamtsieg konnte Holder auch den Athleten-Award mit nach Hause nehmen.
Die Winner Award Ceremony fand im Art Institute von Chicago statt. Durch den Abend führten die TV-Moderatorin Tina Dixon und der Snowboarder Louie Vito. Der Event war auch gleichzeitig das 10-jährige Jubiläum des prestigeträchtigen Fotowettbewerbs. Unter den vielen internationalen Gästen aus der Fotografie- und Sport-Szene waren unter anderem der BMX-Sportler Senad Grosic, Freeskier Johnny Collison und Red Bull Illume Initiator Ulrich Grill.
Im Anschluss an die feierliche Zeremonie waren die Bilder im Rahmen des ersten Stops der Red Bull Illume Exhibit Tour auf 2x2m großen Leuchtkästen zu sehen. Die Exhibit Tour ist eine einzigartige Nachtausstellung, die zwei Jahre lang durch die kulturellen Metropolen und Hauptstädte der Welt touren wird. Um die Bilder richtig in Szene zu setzen, ist die Ausstellung erst nach Sonnenuntergang zwischen 18:30 Uhr und 22:30 Uhr geöffnet. Nach der zweiwöchigen Ausstellung in Chicago, reist Red Bull Illume weiter nach Toronto, Kanada, Yonkers, New York und San Francisco, Kalifornien. Weitere Tourstops werden in Kürze auf redbullillume.com bekanntgegeben.
I shot this unique location a couple months before this action shoot as a landscape picture because I just liked the whole structure and the way it was integrated into the landscape. It’s a viewing platform made of steel that has rusted over the years. You can walk up the stairs to enjoy the view over the lakes that surround the area.
I knew somehow, that there was the potential for it to be a location for an action photo. My first idea was to shoot snowboarding in it, but that was just impossible because of the limited space. I almost gave up on the idea, but then I bumped into Senad Grosic in Berlin one day and we talked a bit about spots and stuff. I showed him the landscape picture and he told me that we need to go back there to see what’s possible.
So Senad and I took a road trip and drove all the way to Senftenberg. We discussed and fine-tuned a plan that would look rad on photo. Senad had the idea to be dressed all white to give it more contrast, because I didn’t want to use flashes to keep the structure as evenly lit as possible. The angle is almost the same angle I chose for the landscape picture. It’s actually an architectural picture with the spice of action sports in it.
I never really found out what this place actually is. It’s just a garden with small hills, where concrete tracks find their way through it in a random way. One part of that garden is like a hilly playground made out of plastic. It was built for a garden-fair close to the Munich fairgrounds. Anyway, I thought this could look really good from a bird’s-eye perspective if a skateboarder could do a kickflip and the sun would make the trick visible with the skater’s shadow.
I found the spot via Google Earth – a new tool for spot scouting when shooting with a drone! It’s a funny thing to see something from space that looks weird and think it could be your next shoot location. I showed my idea to Conny and he was stoked to give this a try. The plastic ground was pretty horrible to skate on – it was the same material basketball courts are made of – but Conny is a hell of a skater and so he was still able to fire some flips even on that terrain.
Der Gesamtsieger Lorenz Holder erhielt als Hauptpreis einen €40.000,- Gutschein von Yodobashi, eine Sony α7R II und eine Sony RX1RM2 mit einem Set an Objektiven, eine G-Technologoy G-Drive ev RaW SSD und ein Broncolor Siros Kit.
Die 55 Finalisten sowie die 275 Semifinalisten sind auf redbullillume.com und allen Red Bull Illume Social Media Kanälen zu sehen. Die Top 275 Bilder werden auch im Red Bull Illume Coffee Table Buch, in limitierter Auflage veröffentlicht. Das Buch kann auf redbullillumebook.com erworben werden.