Photographers Blog

I believe I can fly

Denis Balibouse

Sep 14, 2011 18:00 EDT

By Denis Balibouse

Everybody dreams of flying. Some have even burnt their wings trying to do it. So far, I’ve enjoyed it.

Thanks to my work as a photographer I’ve been lucky enough to experience flight in many different aircraft. I’ve flown in helicopters, paragliders and ultralight planes. I even did jobs for a well-known soft-drink company that proudly asserts that one of its products ‘gives you wings’.

On September 14, I moved one step higher up the ladder when I sat just behind the pilot of an L-39 C Albatros as part of a media demonstration flight prior to the air show in Sion, western Switzerland.

It all started a few weeks earlier when I contacted the air show’s press department about the possibility of placing a couple of Gopro cameras in the cockpit of some planes. I was hoping to have access to four or five aircraft in order to show different angles.

Asking well in advance often means organizers are still in the planning stages, allowing them to include press requests more easily. In my experience, last-minute requests generally result in disappointment.

The next Black Swans

After almost every assignment I come back home grateful for the peak into the world I was offered or the people I met. This last week was no exception as I covered the 39th Prix de Lausanne, an international dance competition for young dancers.

(click on the image above to view a multimedia presentation)

Some 75 candidates aged between 15 to 18 from 19 countries competed at the Palais de Beaulieu Theatre in Lausanne, Switzerland. The young dancers that made their way to the finals were either awarded with a scholarship granting free access to the finest dance schools or with an apprenticeship allowing them to be accepted without an audition to the most renowned ballet companies. In addition to the final and semi-final on the two last days of the event, the first four days were dedicated to training classes and rehearsals of the competition variations. The competitors were judged as they performed their classical and contemporary variation in front of the public during the finals but the jury also evaluated the candidates for their performance in the ballet and contemporary classes.

I photographed two days of the preparation and the semi-finals, following the dancers through the different aspects of the competition leading up to the final. This included early morning warm-ups in the studios, individual coaching sessions on stage, backstage preparation and the semi-final leading to the selection of the 20 finalists. More photo opportunities than any photographer could hope for! These dancers devote their life to their passion, spending three days witnessing their rigorous training and the realization of their dream as they performed in front of the public was, once again, one of these assignments I come back home grateful for.

(Click here to view a multimedia presentation of the Prix de Lausanne)

Shooting deep under the peaks of the Swiss Alps

After over a decade of work Swiss engineers drilling the world’s longest tunnel broke through the last section of rock. With a length of 57 km (35 miles) crossing the Alps, the train tunnel should become operational at the end of 2017. The pictures coverage of the final break-through at the Faido-Sedrun section, shooting and transmitting the pictures from the intestines of the earth was a rare and difficult challenge for Zurich based Reuters photographers Arnd Wiegmann and Christian Hartmann.

Working on this major Swiss story for the past few years and covering all major steps of the construction, we decided to go underground some days before the ceremony, to produce pictures to illustrate preview stories. Our images were very well published in the week before ‘Drilling D-Day’.

While working underground we managed to secure an internet connection, essential to send out our pictures promptly. To shoot the right images is important, but to make them available for clients as soon as possible is the basis of our wire agency business.

As a special event needs special equipment, Arnd built a camera support in order to trigger simultaneously three cameras installed on the same tripod. “I wanted to release two Canon EOS 1 Mark IV cameras with two 16-35mm lenses from the same angle to shoot the moment of the final break through with short and long shutter speeds. In order to fix a 3-D camera it was necessary to build a special plate for the head of the tripod”, he explained.

After talks with officials, it was clear that the number of media representatives would be strictly limited to 40. Among them would be a regular Reuters photographer and a Pool shooter provided by our agency.

Base jumping, Lauterbrunnen

It was a very busy summer for us in Switzerland, covering topics such as politics, sport, business and even the weather. After shooting all these events, my colleague Pascal Lauener and I finally found time to cover base jumping in the Swiss village of Lauterbrunnen. Fortunately, we met a local mountain guide who introduced us to a group of base jumpers called Team Ill Vision. On the first day, we had the chance to do an interview with the local priest who, over the past 18 years, has grown to know the valley and its residents.

We slept in the car during the night in Lauterbrunnen, as we planned to photograph the valley at dark through long exposures, showing the cliffs under the starry sky. Because we knew we would be photographing during most of the night and only sleeping a few hours, it wasn’t worth finding a hotel. After sleeping for a few hours, we rose early to go with Team Ill Vision and the mountain guide Martin Schuermann to the exit point, known as “Highnose”, from where base jumpers bail out into the Lauterbrunnen Valley.

We mounted cords to secure us in a climbing harness. And we had the mountain guide set up a remote camera on a cord about one meter under the jumpers for a different angle. These remotes allowed us to get pictures from three different angles of the same jump.

For another set of jumps, we hiked back to the valley and shot the jumps from below. In addition to the action shots, we recorded video interviews with the mountain guide Schuermann. Similarly, we interviewed Damien Dykman, a member of Team Ill Vision, to hear more about their reasons behind base jumping. Back in Bern, we went through all the pictures and videos and merged them together to create this multimedia piece.

Swiss cliche: alphorn festival

A Swiss mountain, Swiss flags thrown into the air and about 120 alphorn players in traditional clothes: Each summer the alp Tracouet in Nendaz, southern Switzerland, is the stage of an alphorn contest and festival -  Swiss folklore the way you might have pictured it.

This year was no exception as the mountains echoed the International alphorn festival once again.

International? For sure! Joseph and Virginia Anderer tell us why in this audio slideshow.

My other pair of eyes and hands

Denis Balibouse

Jun 26, 2009 12:42 EDT

To add to the blog entry (http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2007/11/07/my-second-pair-of-eyes-ii/) by my colleague Jerry Lampen, more often than we realise we depend on somebody else to enable us to do our job. Generally we think of this profession as individualistic but repeatedly we use the help or the goodwill of others – press and communication managers, security agents, helicopter pilots and drivers.

I would like to make a brief tribute to Olivier Thetaz with whom I take pictured here in action. He is a professional driving instructor training the likes of police or ambulance drivers. He is also a retired amateur race driver and sometimes I think he still has a bit of racing in his blood. I have been sitting on the back of his motorbike on and off for the last 15 years covering cycling, running, triathlon and bikes races.

  The pictures I take are a result of our special relationship. As the races we cover are not too busy compared to those of the Tour de France or Giro d’Italia we are a bit less pressured but I still need to be fast in making a decision to ask him to stop on the side of the road.

I have to look forward and backwards, take into account the sun, the background and the possibility to quickly jump back on the bike to stay ahead of the riders as it is quite difficult to overtake. We try to prepare his position on the road before so we can make the best of the little time we have.

He also needs to be quick and precise.  He has to place the bike in position in front of the riders - we are generally only allowed to shoot for a few seconds and then leave our position on a rotational basis.

We are in constant communication via a bluetooth radio device on our helmets which is a technological improvement compared with the days when we had to scream orders at each other.