When sports photographer Jesper Gronnemark plans his shoots, he goes big. So big in fact, that his latest project with the Danish free fly national team started 4km above ground level. To push the boundaries of sports photography, Jesper decided to jump out of a plane and photograph the athletes during their 45 second freefall.
If the stakes weren’t already high enough, he jumped alongside a flash operator to add a studio-like appearance to the shoot. With only one shot, there was no telling how the results would turn out until they reached the ground.
Jesper explains: “I got the image I had originally envisioned; a man hanging in the air above the clouds, head down. It feels as if it would have been safer if his head was facing up, but when trying to capture the emotions of a skydiving experience, 'safe' is not part of the vocabulary.”