Big interview with professional photographer Predrag Vuckovic for Serbian newspaper with the highest circulation “24 Sata”.
The working space od Predrag Vuckovic is on unusual and inaccessible locations. His speciality is extreme sports and underwater photographs. His photos ended up on pages of over a hundred world magazines.
Professionalism – The citizen of Belgrade, Predrag Vuckovic (35), otherwise an official Red Bull photographer, is one of the first men who brought extreme sports to our country. His first love was skateboarding, windsurfing, bmx and snowboarding.
I’ve been into photography since 1989. Whenever I travelled to some competition in extreme sports, I took my camera with me and thus captured important moments. Today, about 20 years later, there is almost no country in Europe or America in which I haven’t taken at least one photo – says Predrag for 24 sata.
The number of pictures he has taken he does not recall. Almost all extreme sports have been in his objective, a the fact that he himself is into these sports has helped him a lot when it comes to photography.
For this type of photography, the knowledge of extreme sports is vital. I have very high criteria, out of 100 photos I sometimes pick up only one which will be published. In order to capture a jump or a trick, I sometimes use from three to five cameras which are connected to each other by means of remote controls. For a good photo, I often spend many hours improving them, but so far I have never returned from a session without a good photo – says Pedja.
For the sake of quality, he often has to get to grips with inaccessible mountain regions, waves, heights, rain and snow. And the result is unique photographs of a plane manoeuvre, moto-cross riders’ tricks which leave you breathless, base jumpers who are rushing towards the ground from 100m, surfers who are entering the struggle with waves.
I took me a few hours do reach the top of a rock with the equipment weiging 60kg, on a totally remote site on the Dolomites, in order to photograph the jump of a base jumper from 1.125m, and the session itself lasted only a couple of seconds – says Pedja with a smile on his face and adds that this photo, which has been published more than a hundred times, is one of his favourite.
THE ONE WHO SEEKS PEACE, PHOTOGRAPHERS UNDER WATER
Diving – His second love is scuba diving, into which he has been for 16 years, while he has been dealing with underwater photography for seven years. “I am most attracted to the shipwrecks which I am trying to combine with the living worlds. One of my favourite photos is the photo of Thistelgorm ship which sank in the Red Sea, and on it there were also the motorcycles and the cars which it was transporting. The sessions on land and in water are totally different. On land, I have speed and adrenalin, but when I want some peace, I photograph underwater,” says Pedja for “24 sata“.