Lucas Gilman: Going to Extremes

After running Palouse Falls, a 189-foot waterfall in southeast Washington State, 24-year-old extreme kayaker Rafa Ortiz of Mexico described experiencing part of the descent in what felt like slow motion. But for photographer Lucas Gilman, who covered the attempt, the drop was very much in real time.

“Rafa was actually visible for only three frames of the 4-second free fall, because after he got over the tongue, he was engulfed in white water,” says Gilman. “That’s just a split second basically to make the shot. And there would be no second chance to shoot it, no take two, because I couldn’t really ask him to go up and do it again.”

To capture the wild ride, Gilman — a go-to adventure and travel photographer for some of the top magazines and companies in the world — deployed an arsenal of well-tested gear, including several state-of-the-art Nikon cameras. And in the headlong rush to get the photos published, he used a MacBook Pro running Aperture to jump-start his editing process before he even left the site. “My client, Red Bull, wanted to see the images as soon as possible,” he says. “They didn’t want some tourist with a point-and-shoot camera to post it first and steal the fanfare. So being able to use the fast browsing feature in Aperture to process those images onsite was critical.”

Chasing Waterfalls

Because waterfall runs are so difficult to photograph, Gilman typically plans those shoots for several weeks with the athlete, plotting angles and figuring logistics. But for the Palouse attempt there was next to no planning. “I got a call from Rafa right before this all went down, and he asked if I could be in Washington State the next day. I said, ‘How about Tuesday?’ He said, ‘Tuesday’s no good. You need to be here tomorrow.’”