Setting up shop

I just returned from completing one of the most fun and rewarding shoots I can remember in Park City, UT.

This project is the latest in a series of Olympic shoots I’m working on as we try to get updated, relevant imagery in time for the Olympic advertising push later this year. Last fall I got to work with athletes in 26 different summer Olympic sports and now it’s time to revisit some of the important winter sports.

Operation Snowflake was the working title of the project that would encompass skeleton, bobsled, speed skating, figure skating, and hockey. Our creative research showed just how important it is to have commercially salable images of these sports - bobsled in particular - as it so clearly portrays concepts of speed, teamwork, and intensity. One good recent example of winter sports’ commercial relevance is this spot from T. Rowe Price.

A little background on me: This project was right up my alley as sports played a big role in my youth. In addition to playing every sport I could, I was brought up as a child of the Wide World of Sports watching Jim McKay “span the globe” to show some very powerful sports imagery. Images of the “Agony of Defeat” Skier, John McEnroe’s first Wimbledon victory, and Franco Harris’ Immaculate reception are indelibly etched in my memory. Sports images have a special gravity for me now – so I jumped at the chance to tackle this project.

Bobsledding is a sport I have always enjoyed watching (albeit only every 4 years) so it’s an honor to have the opportunity to work with elite athletes making imagery that represent the sport at a global level.

Production commenced after the usual approval process. Amy Uratsu, the producer, did an extraordinary job of pulling it all together. Where do you shoot bobsledding? Tough one. Well, turns out there are only 3 tracks in North America, Calgary, Lake Placid and Salt Lake City. It’s tough to stage and make look real and it necessitates renting the entire facility and staging a real competition. After a hitting a lot of dead ends, we decided to shoot at the track in Salt Lake City on the last possible day of the season – Easter Sunday.

My mandate was to come back with images of these sliding sports that would work in 2 distinct ways: as a literal representation of the professional sports as viewed in the Olympic competition and as conceptually driven imagery that foregrounds relevant commercial themes, allowing for a more stylized end image.

Watch the team take off by clicking here.

With the exception of the photographer, Ryan McVay, who I knew I could rely on to nail the project, nearly every single component of the production had an element of uncertainty. Where do you find a bobsled team on Easter Sunday? Where do you find actual sleds that meet the criteria of commercial photography without logos, etc? Can you find a crew on Easter?

With help from some truly generous people, namely Jeremy Holm and Steve Revelli, it all finally came together. Once we had confirmed access to the track, we locked in talent and crew, had 2 bobsleds custom wrapped blue and red, and booked the travel.

We got to the track a day early to do a tech scout to select locations, POV’s and timings. Then we got a real taste of the sport. After an orientation and signing the scariest liability waiver I’ve ever seen:

we all got to take a run in a bobsled with the 4 time world champion named Stefan. Words simply cannot express what you feel in a four man bobsled. On TV it always looked so smooth. Before this project I secretly thought that bobsledding would be one of the easiest Olympic sports to do – I mean, all you do is sit in a little sled for a minute or two, right? Well, it was the single most extraordinary physical experience I have ever had.

SLC is the fastest track in the world. The track record was 47 seconds and change. We did a 51 second run reaching 80 mph in the turns and pulling in excess of 5 G’s. That meant my head with a helmet ended up weighing about 75lbs! You are bounced around the inside of the sled like a ragdoll. Halfway down I realized that I could barely breath and I couldn’t stop my head from slamming back and forth uncontrollably. Within the first 20 seconds we were going 80mph. Again, words just fail to communicate the magnitude or intensity of that experience. I instantly had a new appreciation for the sport and respect for the athletes.

Here we are - anxious to take a run…

It can’t be hard when we look this good…

After - trying to get out of the sled…

We arrived to the location at 8:00am to meet our athletes and get the shoot rolling. I was happy to discover that we’d cast 8 truly remarkable people for the project. As intense as the athletes were about their chosen discipline, they were all really witty and light hearted. Release photos were taken. Jokes were made. Nicknames established. We had a great rapport from the get go.

Our models getting ready to work

We started shooting as soon as paperwork was sorted and talent got fed. Since each run was so demanding on the athletes, we were given a limited number of runs. Five to be exact. To make the #’s work we ended having 5 cameras up on the action shots. It’s tough to catch; you blink and they’re gone. Check out how it looks from the photographer’s angle by clicking here.

The first run went off around 9:15 we waited for them in turn 14 and listened for them as they came down the track. The facility’s crew consisted of about 12 people in total. They operated more like a team of air traffic control or NASA than a group of ski lift operators – it was all done by the book. The athletes’ safety was paramount. Every single component of the shoot was orchestrated, called over radios, and confirmed.

We broke for lunch, gave the athletes a much-needed break, got warm and reviewed some of the morning’s images. I was happy to know that we had lots of good stuff in the bag and that it opened the day up to a little more experimentation. Ryan shot some really gorgeous, reverent, carefully lit images of the athletes on a black background:

Ryan McVay/Getty Images

Click here to watch the team in action!

Ryan McVay/Getty Images

Then it was back to the action to make sure everyone could get all their runs in before we wrapped. In the end the whole shoot went off without a hitch; We made beautiful pictures, forged friendships with the athletes and crew, and came back with a really good feeling of accomplishment having not only nailed the photos, but returned to LA re-energized from a truly exceptional shoot.

Special Thanks to : Jeremy Holm, Steve Revelli, Donnie Osmond Jr (that’s right), Matt “Big Sexy” Storm, Brad Welch, Joe Sisson, Nick Venneau, Tracey Anderson, Matt “Professor” Griff, Preston and his team at the bobsled track, Rennie Solis, and Jake Campos.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Creative Director, Creative Research, Ryan McVay, Salt Lake City, Winter Olympic sports, bobsled. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.