Laughing at Death’s Door…

Gio Messina is a world-class kiteboarder based in Miami, FL. He travels the globe chasing wind and adrenaline and will be the first to tell you that his motivation for the sport is to chase fear. If he’s not going higher, he’s not trying.

This was an all-hands collaboration with my buddies Gabe Sanchez and Max Reed that required multiple angles of attack to get the story we needed in one short morning, with the added pressure of a looming Miami thunderstorm threatening to cut our day short. I had to match Gio’s boldness with the drone: chasing him and getting close enough to create a visceral relationship to the action. And the 600mm Lens was crucial for getting shots of him in the water, as he needed to go far enough beyond the shore to catch enough wind to fly.

Beyond that, we needed to make sure to get enough variety of shots to show the narrative of a day in the life of his sport, while curating the sound bites needed to craft a compelling narrative.