Extreme photography also means always carrying a spare battery in your pocket and enough memory cards.
“I always carry a battery in my pocket and enough memory cards.”
This is just a small part of Ivaylo Donchev's recipe for extreme photography. He is the first licensed Red Bull photographer in Bulgaria. He shared it in the packed Dynaphos studio during the event dedicated to him and Nikon. Among other ingredients in the recipe, Ivo mentioned discipline and the persistence to start from scratch again.
The meeting with him lasted two hours, but it could have easily gone on twice as long due to his dozens of inspiring stories. Here are some of the many lessons learned by the photographer, not easily, on his path of professional tempering, which began as a joke in his youth by documenting the skateboarding achievements of his friends with whom he skated.
“I have always believed that whatever a person does, they should do it 100%.”
“To the question: how did you become a Red Bull photographer, my answer is very simple. I set it as a goal. It’s a long process.”
“To get where one wants to be, one must surround themselves with people better than them.”
“When I photograph an event, I always ask myself what I want to say. Not to accumulate many similar shots, but you need to have general shots, you need to have detail, you need to have action, you need to have drama.”
"Extreme sports are about making decisions. Very fast, correct decisions. Like in life."
Those who came to hear Ivo also had the opportunity to get acquainted with various Nikon models – the brand with which he captures his shots from Red Bull events.
“Nikon gives me speed, focus, frame rate, battery endurance…”
“I shoot video with Nikon Z8. My favorite Nikon camera is the Z9. Rain, wind, sun, rocks… – we work. Favorite lens? Nikkor 24-70 mm. I can cover everything with it. These are tools that give me confidence that they won’t let me down.”
“It has happened to me that out of 8400 shots taken at an event over a few hours, I delivered 40 shots the next day.”
And more:
“Haters really motivate me. OK? They hate because they are not where they want to be.”
“Once a lens fell on me, a second time another one started to fall while paragliding, but I caught it in mid-air.”
“Video or photography? Skydiving!”
"My favorite project is the next one. Victory is today; tomorrow we start anew."
See more photos from the event, provided by Milena Yankova, on Dynaphos' Facebook page. Expect a video from the meeting on our YouTube channel soon, and in November – an event with Ivaylo Donchev, about which we will tell you more soon. You can read more about Ivo in his profile in the Photographers section of our blog, and you can see his work on his official website.
The photos in the article are by its author, Ekaterina Kostova.
