HYROX — Melbourne Major

Embedded inside the grid for a first-of-its-kind race, with finish-line images out within 10 minutes.

Client: HYROX

Role: Photography — race coverage and creative

Deliverables: Finish-line social images within 24 hours, plus extended creative assets (banners, website, and other imagery) for use across the year

Location: Melbourne, Australia

The brief

HYROX asked me to work on their Melbourne Major in Australia. The goal was to create creative imagery around the race — embedded with the athletes and inside the grid, which is a sensitive area for photographers. It takes understanding the race and avoiding the athletes as they come through the track. The requirements were a quick release off the finish line — images ready for a social post within 24 hours — plus extended creative work for banners, website images, and other assets they could use over the course of the year.

The approach

First was getting a read on the lighting in the arena. We were in a conference center in Melbourne, so I spent time studying the color temperature of the venue lighting. We wanted to use some flash, so we worked on matching color temperatures with the overhead lights.

We shot the men's and women's singles and then the men's and women's doubles, navigating the course throughout, and of course captured the finish line. We set up our editing bay within a minute or two walk of the finish line so we could turn images around fast, delivering HD files to the social team over WhatsApp to get them out quickly.

The imagery was managed with Capture One via sessions for portability and repeatable export settings. By connecting to the cloud folder from Capture One our process for exports was import, edit, and one click submission.

Challenges to navigate

With HYROX, every competition is unique and different. This was the first time they'd ever hosted an Elite 15 race in this kind of separate design environment, so a lot of it was figuring out the ins and outs of the route during the walk through — making sure I wasn't in the way of any of the athletes while still getting into position for the shots.

The lighting was the other piece. The overhead lights were interesting but carried their own color temperature, so we had to match it with gels on any artificial lights to keep everything consistent.