Capturing the sights and sounds of Freeride

One of the main attractions of Freeride is the sheer beauty of the spectacle. The athletes have to negotiate slopes that are largely untouched by humans, and these natural landscapes can be quite wondrous to behold.

Trying to convey that visual kaleidoscope to mere mortals on terra firma is no easy task given most of the action takes place in spots that are hard to access. For photographers and camera operators - excepting the athletes themselves wearing GoPros - there is the challenge of finding the right position and using, as well as transporting, the right equipment for the job.

Then for broadcast coverage of Freeride, there is the challenge of taking all the shots from different vantage points - including drone shots - and combining them into something that will convey the beauty of the scenery as well as the skill of the competitors.

Read on to find out how photographer Dom Daher and Freeride World Tour (FWT) Live Producer Alex Vigneau go about bringing the sport to the world.

Dom Daher - shooting the Freeride World Tour

For Dom Daher, it has been a case of being in the right place at the right time. Having been born and raised in Marseille, his family moved three hours north to Briançon in the French Alps when his father completed his medical degree. That further sparked his interest in skiing and initially mono-skiing which he describes as “very French and not normal because I was not from a ski resort”.

In the mid-1990s, he left home and went to work in Grenoble where he also studied. “That was the big boom of Freeride,” he says. “I was there in the right moment with the right people. And very soon I realized that this guy from Marseille didn’t have the same skills as the guys from real ski resorts!

“I found my path working on Skieur magazine as it was always my dream to work as a journalist. I spent five years there and it was very interesting because you had the start-up and ‘Dot com’ boom everywhere. So the skiing was there, the community, the cool kids were there hanging out, passing by the office, grabbing a pizza and a beer, waiting for a ski movie on VHS to arrive, watching the VHS… and then I was writing my little article about the latest Candide (Thovex) movie or whatever.”

In his early days at Skieur he met eventual FWT founder Nicolas Hale-Woods. At this point, Hale-Woods organized the Xtreme Verbier (SUI) that was restricted to snowboarders. “We had the snowboarders and the skiers in the office, talking together and having fun but not working together,” he recalls. “It was still people on each side doing their own thing.

“I first started working with Nicolas writing a press release when they got skiers on the Xtreme Verbier for the first time. He invited three skiers who were pioneers of Freeride. So I wrote the PR and he said, ‘I think we’re going to have more skiers. They showed us that we can put them on the Bec des Rosses. Maybe you can help me find some more.’ We put together a list of 20 skiers and got around 10. I was also shooting photos and that’s how it started.”

For Daher, this is his 18th consecutive season working on the FWT. He also shot mountain biking and surfing for several years, and recently started covering the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup. In all sports, there are strict principles he adheres to in terms of what he is trying to capture.

“We have to respect our sports, meaning that there is a take-off and a landing, and a line,” he says. “Those elements need to be respected in a picture. Of course, we do close-ups of athletes but, in 18 years of FWT, it’s probably less than 0.5% of what I do. Always the idea is to the show the line and show the risk these guys take because that’s our sport.

“Then it’s to try to play with the colors which are the blue, the white and sometimes the black, meaning the sky, the snow, and some rocks. It’s not a lot to play with, but I think it’s very good in a way that you take the picture back to the essentials. I like simple pictures.

“With mountain biking, I didn’t like all the green and the other elements. Surfing is similar to skiing because it’s more simple. But I prefer skiing because you have this verticality, this 3D element that - even after 25 years shooting skiing - I’m still in love with.”

Freeride is dangerous for the photographers as well as the athletes. After the initial safety inspection by mountain guides, Daher is often the first person on the face before an event. And he has to be prepared for every eventuality.

“If there is, say, an avalanche, we’re the first on the scene and have to be able to help with the rescue. If we need to dig out someone, I need to have my shovel. In Verbier, I don’t need it because there are so many helicopters, and patrols, and people. But in the back country in Georgia, for instance, or later in the season in Alaska, we become part of the rescue team if something goes wrong.

“I have some skins - material strips that go under skis to help go uphill - in my backpack. I’m always in a safe position but there’s never zero risk and maybe I can’t go down because the bottom of the face is only rocks, so I have to climb up.

“But initially, we tell the mountain guide where we want to go. We have a picture of the face marked out as a grid and I’ll say, ‘I want to go on D4. Will you allow me to go there?’ If yes, then you’d go there and tell them on the radio, ‘OK, I’m ready to drop in.’ If it’s in a safe place, I’ll remove my skis. Sometimes I have a little harness, or I can put a piece of rope on a tree just to make sure I don’t fall over. If it’s trickier, I’ll keep my skis and backpack on.”

Technology prompts change, but some things remain

In the past, photographers would carry several lenses and other heavy equipment in his backpack. Advances in technology and materials have reduced the weight although, as Daher points out, “Everything is lighter, but we’re still heavy. When we go down the face, we have to plan our spot and be able to still ski in the same place of the athletes with double the weight. Not at the same speed, of course.”

When he was recently archiving analog photos from Xtreme Verbiers from around the turn of the century, he remembered how different the operation was: “I realized that on the Bec des Rosses, we had up to nine photographers walking, plus a helicopter. Now we’re only two photographers without a helicopter which was stopped for many reasons including the environmental aspect, the cost, and the noise.

“For me, that was hard because my skills were developed shooting sports from helicopters. The good point was I was still a skier and I love to ski and be in the mountains. And my colleague Jeremy (Bernard) was an even better skier so we were back in the mountains but on the ground.

“From 2007-09, I used a remote control helicopter that I built. It was 2.5 meters long with an 80cc motorcycle engine and could stay up to an hour in the air so it was very good. But then in 2011, the first drones arrived.”

Drone shots have helped the athletes considerably when it comes to scoping the slopes, but the quality is still not up to the standard Daher would want for photography. “In this era of AI, we try to keep the sport as pure and authentic as possible,” he says. “And we need the framing to give it what it deserves. It can’t be screenshots from a video. We want to work on solutions that are going to keep the picture and the athlete’s performance at its best.

“We don’t touch the pictures. It’s forbidden - by us - and we don’t have time. I have to provide over 500 pictures within 20 minutes including at least one picture of each rider to feed their social network. Of course, I can adjust the level so that the white is white, the gray is gray, and the dark is dark, but I can’t do anything more than that. The communication department might say, ‘Can you push up the level of saturation?’ That might be a different film back in the day… but we don’t work on the picture. I could put the guy higher in the sky, or enlarge the cliff, but then it’s not a documentary photo anymore. It’s a fake, and I don’t want to have fake in my sport.”

Alex Vigneau - shaping the Freeride World Tour's TV coverage

Where technology has certainly helped is on the television side with drones playing an increasing role in the coverage. Alex Vigneau is the executive producer and live producer, and became involved when he raced alongside the FWT’s then-chief operating officer at the Dakar Rally.

“They wanted to improve the TV production seven years ago and they knew that I was not only a competitor but also a TV producer,” he says. “I’m working on three aspects in the FWT: the first is technique because it’s important to have all the production set-up on a mountain, the second is artistic, and the third is editorial because we’re covering a sport and we have to tell the story of what is happening.

”We want people to have the same view as the judges because we want the viewers to have their own opinion about the score and performance of the athletes. So the shot we use most is the wide lens, and at each event this wide lens is positioned very close to the judges. It’s very important for us that our viewers get the same point of view as the judges.

“We also have a close-up that is used mostly for replays. We have a manually-operated camera at the start gate with an RF transmitter close to the athletes, which needs someone with mountain skills who can operate in a small area before getting down with 15 kilos of material. And we have a camera at the finish corral getting reaction.

“Then we have cameras with no operators - one on the commentary booth, one of the judges’ booth, and one making beauty shots of the venue that we can use for graphics. In addition to that, we have two drones - a stabilized drone around the start gate to show the riders and scenics of the venue. And the second drone is an FPV (First-Person View) Drone that follows the rider, and we have to change the battery after each run which takes some organization.

“The FPV drones are a major improvement but shooting Freeride with them is an experience because we don’t know exactly where the athletes will go. We speak to the riders when they’re doing their face checks the day before, and we know what sort of run they could do.

“So, the Spanish guys like Aymar Navarro and Abel Moga are going straight to the bottom fast. Someone with more of a Freestyle background like Maxime Chabloz will use all of the mountain and cliffs and jumps to make tricks. So I’m telling the TV crew, ‘OK, next is Maxime Chabloz and he’ll do some freestyle. Next is Abel Moga. This guy is fast and will go straight to the bottom.’

“But we know that the categories don’t go at the same speed and the snowboarders will take a different line from the skiers. So it can be a tricky adaptation and it’s quite hazardous to pilot those drones.”

Daher also receives input from riders in order to decide where to position himself. “On the day before the event, Jeremy and I do our backpacks,” he says. “We know pretty much where we’re going to go because we’ve talked to the athletes and been on location. We see the face and watch it from the bottom, or from where the production tent is going to be.

“Every face is different. We can be heli-dropped at the top, or hike to the top or to a position in the middle of the face. For example in Verbier, because the idea is to leave as few tracks in the snow as possible, quite often we are dropped in the middle of the face where there are a couple of rocks. And in some faces, we can decide to move during the competition. Snowboarders and skiers won’t necessarily go past the same position.

“We also want to have shots that aren’t action. We love to have some preparation at the top like a rider getting ready to drop into the face, adjusting goggles, clipping in ski boots, that kind of thing.

“Sometimes we might decide that one photographer can handle all the skiers, and the other can focus on the start for the preparation shots. And then we move after maybe one category to another position in the middle of the face.

“On other occasions, one of us might have to do what we call the ‘BBQ angle’ meaning we’re basically at the finish line or near the judges with a huge lens and shoot from there. We don’t do that a lot because it’s a bit boring but we might have to for safety reasons. Sometimes the security comes before the quality. In the bag we always have two cameras, basically one big lens and one shorter lens which allows us to shoot the podium.”

Meeting deadlines and demands

While Daher would occasionally like to change positions to shoot from a different angle, time pressure can make that impossible. “We have 40 seconds between each rider and seven minutes between categories,” he says. “If you decide to switch location, you have to be sure you can put all the gear away, move, and bring it all out again in the seven minutes.

“Within 20 minutes of returning to the office at the bottom after the event, we have to send action shots of the 1-2-3 from each category. So after each athlete, I’m going through the photos I took and selecting two or three of the best. And at the end of each category, I know who’s made the podium places, and have to go through all of them. I ‘star’ the photos of the top three so I only have to download them back in the office. So sometimes we’re not very keen to move on the face because we also have to do this backing up of the photos in those seven minutes.”

On the TV side, as well as the live production, there is video to be produced for after the event. “Each competitor has a GoPro so we collect this material at the finish corral,” reveals Vigneau. “We’re using this GoPro for social media and also in post-production. With the edit of broadcast programs - 52 or 26 minutes - we’re careful with the GoPro footage because, for example, someone jumping a big cliff might be more interesting in the close-up of the camera rather than the GoPro angle.

“But with the GoPro, you get the sound of the athlete and the snow. So sometimes in post-production, we take the sound from the GoPro and put it together with the shot from the outside.”

The TV production is also very dependent on the weather as delays can affect scheduling as well as equipment. “On race day, my first priority is to bring the people to the mountain safely,” says Vigneau. “Secondly, to turn on the whole broadcast setup. When it gets very cold, we don’t stop the power of the setup because we want to avoid fog and freezing within the cameras.

“Then we start the competition and we always link with the race director. And once it’s on, we always look to the weather forecast because it will decide the conditions and the timings of the live. For example, if we know that we have clear blue sky for the whole day, we’ll take more time than if we know fog is coming and we only have four hours to do the competition.

“We can measure the runs in snowboard because you cannot lose a snowboard. But if there are a lot of crashes in ski, you don't know how much time it takes to get the skis back to the rider and for the rider to be back to the finish corral. So we must read the time over the whole live and we have takers - TV channels - behind us who can see on the running order, the evolution and the delay that we’ll have depending on weather or race conditions.

“When you start the competition, you don’t know what will happen so we're prudent at the start and get the runs in quickly. And then halfway through the competition or after two or three categories, we know how it goes and whether we have to accelerate or take our time. We always have pieces of content with us in case we have to take our time, but usually on the FWT, we try to shorten the show. We’re like, ‘OK, we have this interview, but we don’t have time as there's a cloud coming and we have to do the competition.’”

Innovation is always on Vigneau’s mind but, like Daher, he believes remaining true to the sport is key. “I think the next step will be to increase the quality of the broadcast and slow motion could be a good add-on. But it’s hard to position the camera because, unlike Alpine Skiing, the athletes never pass the same spot.

“The main thing is that, with the evolution of Freeride, I think we have to welcome a new community of viewers and to tell them how the sport works. And we can’t forget that the riders do not know the venue before the day of competition. We have to explain that to the people and to make them understand how tricky and demanding it is to ride this level.

“You know, how do we tell the sport to people who have never seen Freeride before? The biggest thing is to be faithful to the drama of the competition. Because for a rider, a whole season of FWT including months of training, everything is played around five runs of one and a half minutes. So the drama is really intense. And if people watching can feel the same drama that we do on site, I'm happy.”