the story behind the photo CoreUPT.com original dream team

This photo is out of the CoreUPT vault and was shot in may 2008 with the original  rider’s team of the young brand. We shot it in an abandoned hotel on top of what used to be the main stairs. At the time, the team wasn’t complete and Coreupt was still negotiating to recruit more riders, so we needed to take that in account and leave space on the photo for the future riders (without knowing how many they would be).

 The very first riders were Guerlain Chicherit, Candide Thovex, Xavier Kuhn , Richard Permin, Gus Kenworthy and Adrien Coirier.
Then Julien Lange joined the team, so we came back to the abandoned hotel, roughly at the same spot, with print in hands of the first picture to decide where we will put him.
Then Colby James West and TJ Schiller joined the team, but the only chance we had to shoot them on time for the start of the winter season and the team announcement was to join them in New Zealand where they were training. So i went and shot TJ Schiller in our hotel room, looking at prints i brought of the original picture to decide where to put him.

The photo was getting a bit crowded then, and we needed to find a place for Colby. Being the funny character that he is, we decided to put him in the middle of the stairs as if he was actually falling down. So in order to do that we needed to find real stairs to get the right angle. We found them in the restaurant building of Cardrona resort, i went to the first floor and shot Colby laying on his back doing all type of crazy mimics as if he was falling down.

Then back home i merged all this shot into one photo and did my usual postproduction tricks to come up with a very contrasty Black and White shots with touch of colors, the visual identity of the brand.

Some riders left and some new ones came during the history of CoreUPT, but i always loved this shot, the original idea and all the challenges we overcame to produce the final image. It was – to me – reflecting very well the incredible team they had and the rock n roll spirit of the young start up.

Many thanks for reading...