Building the shot with Jean-baptiste Liautard

It's been just seven years since Jean-baptiste Liautard (Jb) started taking his photography seriously and while others might still be finding their feet, he's quickly established himself as a pioneering extreme sports photographer, able to create compelling imagery on the grandest scale. At the tender age of 25, he is already a Canon Ambassador, has picked up a string of awards, including Pinkbike's Photo of the Year 2019, and names Red Bull among his ever-growing list of clients.

His remarkable work results from a refined photographic process. With a final vision in mind, Jb shoots over several stages, each resulting in a single image. At each stage, he adds layers of complexity until his vision is realised. "When you start shooting, every photographer wants to take a lot of pictures because you don't want to miss anything," he explains. "I want to make the right moment happen at the right time. I work in a way that allows me to take a couple of frames that are really what I want in terms of lighting and composition. It's an approach I developed quite early because I was bored of editing pictures I didn't like."

Jb applied this process during his first-ever shoot with the Canon EOS R5 and Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8L IS USM lens, resulting in a truly incredible final image (above). Here he talks us through his approach and the techniques behind it.

Although Jb often attaches his camera to a tripod, on this occasion he shot handheld. "I wish I had two tripods," he explains. "But the fact is I only have one, and that was helping set up a mirror for the second stage."

"The internal stabilisation on the Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8L IS USM lens helped as the live image on the screen was really stable, meaning it was easy to have precise framing. I enable IS on every handheld shot as it helps to correct my movements if I need to run to get into position, for example.

"The surroundings weren't that pretty," he continues, "so I tried to isolate the subject by using a longer focal length, 27mm, which helped me get closer to the subject and remove objects in the background. This was also shot at f/2.8 to introduce a bit of background blur."

While Jb often uses mirrors horizontally to look like lakes or puddles, this shoot required some experimentation. "It's the first time I've used the mirror's reflection vertically," he continues. "This time I thought the jump could look like a volcano in the middle with the rider spreading his arms on both sides.

"The mirror was standing on my tripod leaning against a tree. My assistant helped me hold it at the perfect angle. I would adjust it myself and when I found the perfect position, my assistant held it during the shot. Of course, it's easier when you're shooting with a horizontal mirror. Next time I'll try to work out a proper way to set it up.

"Shooting with a mirror may sound pretty easy," Jb continues, "but you have to consider that a mirror is made of different layers of glass and the longer the lens, the more distortion and ghost effects you'll have. So I would suggest staying between 15mm and 35mm to keep a good image quality and sharpness in the reflection."

The final image introduced four Canon Speedlite 600EX II-RTs, triggered using radio transmitters and using a shutter speed of 1/200 sec. "The flashes froze the action, not the shutter speeds," Jb reveals. "Although sometimes I like to include some ambient light by lowering the shutter speed, here I used the aperture at f/4 because I wanted to gain a bit of sharpness and a greater depth of field. The ISO was 1250.

"It's a bit of a complicated setup," he admits of the lighting arrangement. "We were supposed to have smoke, but there were too many trees and it didn't look good. Using smoke with a wide-angle lens is tricky, especially when a large area has to be covered. Also, the jump was surrounded by a lot of obstacles which made it hard to set up my flashes and the fires needed to create the smoke.

"In the end, I created a vibe using Speedlites and gels," Jb continues. "I had two in the background placed on the ground facing up with blue gels. They were about five metres behind the rider but hidden by the jump, which ensured the light didn't leak into the foreground. The flash zooms were set to 24mm so they would light up all the trees even though they were pretty close to them. I used two so I had even more power."

The foreground lighting was added for safety reasons. "Because we were shooting at night, I used two sets of continuous lights at the front so the rider could see where to land. It looked cool to have some lights on the jump, especially as I didn't have smoke in the background, so we kept them in."

Finally, the rider himself had to be lit. "I set up a flash on the left going from the bottom of the landing directly to the rider. And I had another one on the other side hidden by the mirror – you can just see the contrast on the right-hand side of the tree. So, on both sides of the jump there was a Speedlite without a gel."

With the final image complete, Jb's creative vision was realised. Perhaps surprisingly, it's a vision that accepts a certain level of imperfection. "When you're shooting with a mirror, it doesn't go all the way to the tree, for example," he says. "So, when you look at the tree you can see there's a bit that's not perfectly symmetrical. That's just the game we play."

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