Planning, Patience and luck went into this shot
Jody and I just spent 8 days in the Atlas mountains of Morocco to get some images of the new Niviuk Artik 3 with Toby Colombe, owner of Passion Paragliding, who kindly offered to give us a hand with finding great locations as well as flying her tandem when needed. Jody can shoot while flying solo, but of course the percentage of shots goes way down when you have to worry about crashing into the side of a mountain or getting a big collapse with your hands off the brakes. Follow Passion Paragliding on Facebook to find out more about their offerings.
Rewards for the Patience
Conditions and logistics always makes it tricky for shooting paragliding, and this trip was no exception. Our initial plan was to spend three days in the mountains. 3 turned to 4, to 5, to 6, and finally went to 8. We could have easily spent more, but as Jody is buried right now with putting together a coffee table style photo book of The Best Odyssey (stay tuned!), a whole host of magazine features, and getting things like the planned new website (more on this shortly) styled, we eventually had to call it.
Flying over a small village in the Atlas Mountains on the new Artik 3
The photos here are just a sample of the results, the rest have been FedExed over to Niviuk headquarters. Follow Niviuk on Facebook to see more in the near future.
There were quite a few other pilots around during the shoot, enjoying the mostly stellar conditions that are typical of Morocco this time of year. I think everyone was pretty surprised about all the enormous effort that goes into a paragliding shoot. The logistics; weather; both the pilot and the photographer moving through 4 dimensional space; and the very short period of good light in the evening- a lot has to come together. Three days in a row we didn’t get a single shot. Each day seemed like Groundhog day. 1) Choose location depending on weather. 2) Scout shots and WAIT. 3) HURRY HURRY HURRY, the 4) Hope the for the best.
Hope you enjoy…
Morocco's beautiful evening glow
Testing the new Niviuk Roamer Lightweight expandable speed Harness