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An ice cold can of RedBull makes this German feel right at home.

This spring I ventured to Australia for the first time and what an experience it was. I have never been to a more laid back country; the motto could literally be “no worries.” Luckily for wakeboarding, Oz delivers a perfect escape for winter and that’s where I met up with German Felix Georgii. BliBli Cable park had just finished a wall ride with a creeper ledge for a contest and Felix was lucky enough to be able to session it first. Right away Felix knew what trick he wanted to shoot a photo of on it. I knew going into it that shooting long lens probably wouldn’t look the best because I would be shooting directly into the main cable park with wires and ropes going every direction. I decided to shoot wide angle from the landing side so Felix would be foot planting just in front of me. By shooting so low everything in the background would be hidden and the focus would be solely on Felix.

Felix sessioned the wall for about 20 minutes making sure we had the right extension of his foot off the wall.  Also, keeping the rope and the nose out of his face was important too. Here are a few outtakes and the final photo that ended up running on the cover.

Camera Settings:
ISO: 160
Shutter: 1/1250th
F-Stop: F/4
Camera: Canon 1D Mark IV
Lens: Sigma 20mm F/1.4A
Flashes: 3x AlienBee 1600

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His leg planting the wall is to compressed and the handle is directly in his face so Felix did a few more.

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This is a solid option but it doesn’t pop the way I wanted to. The sky is a little flat and he is lower than normal.

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Here is the safety angle shooting long lens at the wall.  As you can see the background gets distracting even with Felix high on the wall.

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Here is the final frame that ended up running on the cover. Clouds rolled in giving the sky some texture and Felix went higher than before. The handle is still blocking his face some, but you can still see over half of it, so it doesn’t take away from the photo too much. Shooting low like this is hard to get the handle completely out of his face.