QUEBEC CITY RED BULL CRASHED ICE PANOS
Try it if you dare!
by Jean-Pierre Lavoie
Jean-Pierre Lavoie of Photojpl.com shares his panorama journalism experience shooting the Red Bull Crashed Ice event on January 26th, 2008 in the old Old Quebec City.
2008 is an important year for Quebec City because it celebrates it’s 400th anniversary. There are going to be public events and celebration throughout the year. The VRs I present here were taken in the historic district of Old Québec on January 26 at the Red Bull Crashed Ice skating competition. This sport is a combination of downhill skiing, hockey and boardercross. Athletes from 11 countries participated. This challenge started in Sweden in 2000, then it took place in other European cities like Moscow, Prague and Helsinki last year. See history. 
click here to view the start of the raceLiving in Montreal, I went to Quebec City to cover the event for Cyberpresse.ca. In December 2007, I started to work closely with Cyberpresse.ca which is a web portal for seven major newspapers in the province of Quebec. I cover actuality events for them and do photojournalistic VR photography which are called in French “Photo-bulle” or Bubble pictures. This is another really exciting way to explore panoramic photography and show the full context in which an event is taking place. Like all VR photographers, I want to show everything, not only the politician or the main subject, but the public reactions, the other medias, etc. I think that this VR photojournalistic trend, which really started last year in the United States and France (that I know of), is going to become more and more popular, to use the growing interactive power of the internet. 
click here to view the end of the race
I am an electronics engineer who started to work full time in the panoramic photo field since last year. I always was a serious amateur photographer and really began to do panoramic photography in 2000 with my first digital camera. I love the challenge of working mainly for myself and not to depend on decisions and process of other large companies I did work for in the past years. I do not depend on choices that are made by previous employers or other business manager. I enjoy now being in full control of my own destiny and explore fully my creativity. This is what panoramic photography enables me to do. My engineering background is helping me also a lot to succeed in my new career.
I do work for publishing houses and new teaching material for the educational field. For instance, I work to make high quality and high resolution architectural photographs of religious sites of all kinds of religions across the province of Quebec and this interactive material will be available for our students in upgraded courses in the province of Quebec. I also do commercial and cultural panoramic photography projects, as those for local small cities, which want to improve their websites and show their key areas, in order to promote them.
I used a Canon XTI with a Sigma 8mm lens, a Nodal Ninja panoramic head and an adapted lighting tripod to lift the camera 4 to 5 meters high. I also used a Canon flash with a Gary Fong diffuser to bring out people details around me. I use PTGui, Adobe Photoshop and Pano2QTVR and DxO Optics Pro 5 as a RAW converter.
I was a bit afraid of battery weakening problems because it was -20° Celsius and my flash was not firing every time I wanted. Nevertheless I took multiple shots and got some good ones and I was keeping spare batteries in my pocket within one of those small heat pocket bags you can buy at outdoors supplies. When the pictures were done, I went out of the freezing cold…
Links:
Photojpl.com
Watch the coverage at Cyberpresse.ca
Email: j_plavoie at videotron.ca
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