4 seconds

Have you ever wondered what will happen in you life in the next 4 seconds? I have often evaluated what will happen – or more often what would I like to happen – to me within the next 1/2 year or so. But honestly the next few seconds, between rarely and never had I thought what will I be then…

Saturday 2022-07-16 I was at an Redbull Cliff dive event. Young men jumps of the roof of the Royal Danish Opera into Copenhagen harbor – 27 meters below – women climb 5 meter down before jumping. According to the information the male jumpers spend a little more than 3 seconds between they set off and hammering into the water. Acceleration is the well known 9.8 M/s² provide by gravity, so they end up hitting the water surface at 85 Km/t (53 Mp/h). It hurts a lot if you do it wrong.

According to my camera time stamping of images it takes 4 sec from the jumper bends down the knees to jump til he lands in the water. What do they think while in the air? I guess on how to secure the landing in front of them, no thought about who they’ll spend x-mass with.

To photograph such an event is challenging, first just to find a spot is not easy. Coming early is fine, but then others come and make a crowd around you or stay at a longer distance, that gives you poorer shots. The shots in this series are focused on 266 meters (887″) and shot with a Nikon D850 attached to a Tamron 150-600 mm, set at 550 mm. f/7.1 and 1/1250 was my setting – ISO automatically set at 100-200 ISO for the series.