Cliff Diving is a dangerous and a bit crazy sport. There are no other words for explaining the decision of taking jump of 27 meters and performing a bunch of pirouettes on the way and hitting water at an approximate speed of 90 kilometers per hour.
Every jump is risky, but not only divers experience the adrenaline flow; a part of Red Bull’s staff (photographers and the television crew)lived through that feeling in their own flesh.
This is so because Red Bull, the official organizer of the event, sponsored by Maurice Lacroix Swiss watch brand, had the opportunity to place its staff in the best positions to enjoy the competition. Thus, we were able to see photographers floating in the sea, laying down injump platforms, below them or in really high places with privileged views.
Particularly, four of these photographers were at their best in the Morro fortress and Havana in general, during the first stop of the World Series, and provided OnCuba a number of spectacular images they had taken during their stay in the Cuban capital.
They are Romina Amato, Dean Treml, Agustín Muñoz and Camilo Rozo. All of them have some experience in covering the World Series and other extreme sports. Briefly, we offer a profile of Red Bull’s photographers in Havana.
Dean Treml: this NeoZealander is a vivid example of inborn talent in terms of photographs. Since he was little he showed he had a special eye so he made the most of his qualities and started working as freelance.
Since then, he has never stopped and good fortune has always accompanied him. For instance, he has been hired for the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, Tenis Grand Slam, Moto GP and WRC Rally. As part of the business, he provides images for world class customers, including international news agencies AFP and AP, as well as Getty Images, the most important photograph agency of the planet.
His images have been published in The International Herald Tribune, TIME, National Geographic, La Stampa , Sports Illustrated , Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Le Monde , USA Today, The Evening Standard , Asahi Shimbun, The Independent and The New York Times.
He has specialized in sports and publishing photographs. One of his strongest points is his capacity to provide a thorough internal perspective of the events he is covering, whether hanging from a helicopter or challenging the sea and the earth, an excellent way of getting perfect shots for his customers.
Romina Amato: She was born in Molfetta, Italy, and at present she is living in Lucerna, Switzerland. She was always fascinated with photography and since she was a little child she showed great creativity. She majored in portraits and feature photographs, and later on she engaged in graphic design, advertising and marketing. Once settled in Switzerland, she joined Blick Sport, a leading Swiss sports journal where she developed her techniques in sports photography over six year.
Agustin Muñoz: He was born in Argentina, but he is living in Costa Rica.
He is a photographer for extreme sports. He capturesenergetic images, with multiple scenes challenging death, the perfect hook for amateur photographers in the search for emotions. From surf to skiing and bullfighting, BMX and Cliff Diving, Muñoz covers exciting sports whether on water or ground, all of them highly risky. He has also mastered action sequence techniques in athletics, which offers multiple perspectives of the trajectory of sportsmen while performing.
CamiloRozo: He is a Colombian living in Bogota. Even though he is a sound technician and almost majored as agricultural engineer, he used to get into his uncle’s lab and was fascinated by the development of negative images into black and white. Photography became a passion for him and he started taking shots with a Brownie his uncle had given him.
At the age of 16, he attended to his first photography lessons by Colombian Hernando Oliveros, one of the pioneers of photojournalism in the country. Ten years later he went to study in London, when he was definitely launched into photography, stopping over in India, Nepal, China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia, and Australia, which contributed with his training.
In Colombia he has worked for several magazines and journals, including SoHo magazine, which gave him the assignment of travelling and working along with prestigious Colombian journalists, and turn every story the cover into images.
He joined Red Bull by winning a contest by the Austrian company, known as Red Bull Photo Challenge, for the purpose of creating a staff of photojournalists all over the world. A couple years ago he commented on his work with Red Bull:
“This job takes a lot of time for a picture, it is necessary to be quick and a good photographer, you cannot make a mistake. You have to work fast in the edition of the images: you get to the hotel, you edit them and you have to send them as soon as possible. Therefore, previewing is essential, you have to picture the image in your head almost before taking it.”
