How to do Skydiving & Wingsuit Photography

Photography Tips

From the same daredevil company that brought you that ridiculous stratospheric freefall (that’s Red Bull, for those unaware) comes this 45-second behind-the-scenes glimpse at how skydivers snap perfectly composed shots, despite plummeting swiftly from an airplane toward certain death:

Red Bull has teamed up with Wolfgang Lienbacher to create this seemingly simple three-step process to show amateurs how it’s done.

Lienbacher starts by using a Sharpie to draw the camera’s point of view on his goggles—even though it’s strapped to his head, he still wants to know where it’s pointing.

He also has hooked up a hands-free shutter release mechanism, seemingly voice-activated so he can control his helmet SLR with just his vocals. (Hopefully he’s not screaming the whole way down.) He also has a GoPro latched on, so his head must be carrying some serious weight.

His settings are what you’d expect—a hyper-quick shutter speed of 1/1600 of a second, with a more modest aperture and low ISO to let in as much light as possible, to balance out the exposure.

And that’s it—the rest is simple. All you have to do is wear a ludicrous wingsuit and jump out of an airplane like a crazy person. Suddenly, professional photography seems easy.