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Ready, set, action Photographer and filmmaker David Spurdens talks us through his exhilarating career, from extreme sports in the European Alps to a daring stunt at the Eiffel Tower
L ike many creatives, artistic talent ran in David Spurdens’ family. His father, a football journalist, first introduced him to sports photography and he seemed to naturally excel. As a young person, Spurdens worked for agencies and newspapers in London, picking up the odd job before becoming chief sports photographer for the Sunday Express . This took him to major contests like Wimbledon and the World Cup, until eventually the budgets began to run dry. “It wasn’t going to be the same as it had been for a long time, when it was a
Learning curve Like a lot of photographers, according to Spurdens, he first started filming on DSLRs using whatever kit was currently at his disposal. “No disrespect to those cameras, but nothing ever quite got close to the beauty film could produce.” Regardless, he made do, employing his manual focusing skills to aid in his filmmaking around the time autofocus was taking over. For ten years, “I had an absolute ball,” Spurdens beams. “It was the most fun because I was working with all
good living,” Spurdens recalls realising. With a knack for visual storytelling and nothing to lose, he moved to Switzerland and started capturing extreme sports – snowboarding, skiing, BASE jumping and mountaineering among them. “I arrived in Switzerland knowing what I could do with cameras, but didn’t have a clue what I was going to do with all these sports,” he admits, “because they weren’t in a stadium – they were taking place on the side of huge mountains with glaciers. So I just had to learn how to do all of that incredibly quickly.”
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