This month we spoke to Lorenz Holder, an award-winning, German-born photographer who specialises in action sports. Instead of focussing on close-up intensity, like a lot of photographers in the field, Lorenz likes to look at the bigger picture. Opening his frame wider, he captures whole worlds, serene and dreamlike spaces in which the rider is just one small player.
Action sports are all about turning every variable up to eleven - going faster, sending it bigger off jumps, or trying more complex combos. Lorenz's signature style - glossy, ultra HD images captured at the peak of a rider's trick - is perfect for this. Dripping with drama his photos are often framed in the most unusual settings - so perfect that they seem unreal. It's no surprise that along with Ansel Adams and Andreas Gursky, Lorenz cites the surreal work of Sweden's Peter Lundström among his favourites. And yet the incredible thing about all of these shots is they did happen. The golden rule of action sports photography is that you cannot fake a trick, so each one of these photos is the result of painstaking preparation, elaborate lighting set-ups, and nailing the action at the perfect moment."All of this is real - the golden rule of action sports photography is that you cannot fake a trick"
Lorenz Holder on the other side of the lens.
"I like to tweak reality, but of course I do it without the use of photoshop - I tweak it with angles and lighting"
Senad Grosic, tail whip, Northern Ireland. Shot on a Phase One IQ3 camera with a Schneider-Kreuznach 240mm f4.5 lens and an Elinchrom Ranger RX flash.
Anton Gunnarsson, air-to-fakie, Umeå, Sweden. Shot on a Canon 5Dmkii and a Canon 24-70mm f2.8 lens.
Skater, heelflip, Laax, Switzerland. Shot on a DJI Phantom 3 drone, with a polarizing filter.
Senad Grosic, nose manual, Senftenberg, Germany. Shot on a Canon 5Dmkiii with a Carl-Zeiss 18mm f.3.5 lens.
Xaver Hoffman, air-to-fakie, near Munich, Germany. Shot on a Canon 5D mkii with a Carl-Zeiss 18mm f.3.5 with two big Elinchrom ranger RX studio flashes.