Taking photos of the F1 car from the tower at the end of the famous Charles Bridge in Prague or from the rooftop of the bank in the middle of Bratislava? It might sound a bit crazy and sci-fi but thanks to the fact that apart from my co-operation with MCH Photo I have just recently become a member of Redbull Photography it actually turned into reality.
Do you want to know what it takes to be part of such a shooting? There was a lot preparation before the actual shooting, mainly for the video crew as the whole project was done for the video in the first place and so it was the priority. For us – photographers it meant quite a lot of difficulties and really limited time to capture what we needed, so at the end it was quite complicated. I went to some of the locations (that were picked up by the video crew) before the shooting to check all the possible angles and spots that I could shoot from. During the shooting, 90% of the time there was the Russian Arm in front of the F1 car, and the other 10% was taken by the drone crew, so the scene needed to be as clean as possible. So at the end we had probably like 5–10 minutes at each of the locations to take some photos, when there were no cameras shooting, sometimes not even that and so we just needed to find some spots where we were not in the shot, while they were filming and try to capture as much as possible. At some of the locations out in the nature I wore a camouflage cover that is normally used by snipers and at some of the locations we could use some remote cameras.
I also had a radio from the production team, so I had an idea about what was happening and could plan how I move within the scene to not to be seen in the shot. I was there not to shoot only backstage photos, but I actually need to capture some clean action shots when you could not see anyone from the production team. The whole shooting was pretty intense as there were many locations that were not even close to each other, so we need to drive a lot as well and obviously there was lack of sleep during the whole shooting, but it was obviously worth it. To hear the noice of the engine of the RB7 in the street was just unforgettable!