20.05.2015, 05:34
Travellers with lens criss-cross Europe

FEATURE: Two photographers made a special pilgrimage to FINAL4 handball cities tracking the bright stars of the handball sky

Travellers with lens criss-cross Europe

For the second year in a row, two photographers from Austria set out on a handball odyssey this spring. As part of the EHF/EHF Marketing Photo Project Johannes Kernmayer and Chris Singer visited cities boasting the teams which made it all the way to the VELUX EHF FINAL4 and MVM EHF FINAL4.

Their assignment was to provide the handball public with a different point of view on the greatest stars of this sport to date as they covered not only the team shots of the sides before they descended upon the FINAL4 venues, but also portrayed some of the clubs’ icons in a very unique artistic fashion.

From the deep of the Balkan peninsula (Skopje) to Scandinavia (Larvik) and from sunny Barcelona to Poland’s heartland (Kielce) they criss-crossed the continent with equipment weighing over 100 kilograms.

“On the one hand this project was challenging and very interesting from a photography point, but it also required all my organisational skills. Once the shoots began, I found myself, while packing up, already planning and organising the next one in my head,” Johannes said.

All coverage nearly stolen, nearly lost

The weight of their luggage could be easily underestimated unless someone tries to walk in their shoes. This was the case at Barcelona Airport, where the two photographers were nearly robbed by two thieves.

They tried to take advantage of Chris sitting on his own in the hired car at the arrivals parking. However as they were struggling to snatch the surprisingly heavy backpacks (containing all the picture material from Larvik and Kiel) from the back seats, Chris managed to hit one of the thieves with the car door and chase them away.

They thought all their work is lost for the second time within a couple of days after their checked-in luggage with all their photo equipment failed to make it back to Vienna.

Due to technical problems at the Barcelona airport they were given only handwritten boarding passes and later they were explained that their luggage was not signed correctly. After one day of waiting and dealing with the fact that their photo equipment was lost, all the bags were found and safely delivered to the photographers.

Authentic stars

Working already for the second time with big names of the handball universe the Johannes and Chris are already very well aware of what kind of “models” the players are.

“My experience with all the players we had in front of our cameras so far is that they are very authentic and know how they would like to be presented. If we consider this and take it from there, we receive a great amount of dedication and passion during the shoot in return,” Chris said.

Check here galleries from Johannes and Chris here:

FC Barcelona

THW Kiel

Vive Tauron Kielce

MKB-MVM Veszprem

See the making of the shoots at FC Barcelona and THW Kiel.

TEXT: EHF / br