Spotlights by Melissa Westphal 6/9
Interview with Mark Supik
Photographer, Videographer, Brand Strategist
How do you prepare for shooting a high energy event like a competition or HPLT?
After helping lead HPLT content for 10 summits now, I’ve realized that there is no perfect way to prepare. While the bones of the weekends stay the same, the action in the moment can be totally unpredictable. Chasing down runners on e-bikes, hanging out of golf carts, shooting underwater, etc. Preparation doesn’t have to mean you’re ready for what’s to come. For us, it moreso means being prepared to handle what’s out of your control. The unexpected. Studying our weekend itinerary, planning out our routes, and getting crystal clear on our individual tasks is what’s helped us stay at the top of our game after all these years!
How do you manage to freeze motion and still capture the intensity of the moment?
It’s a mix of being in the right place at the right time and also trusting the participants to bring the energy, which is never a problem! If you’ve ever attended an HPLT Summit, you’re a certain kind of person, and with our activation leaders knowing how to get the best out of our participants, getting “the shot” is not something we worry about. It also helps when we’re shooting an entire activation, not just waiting for one moment to happen. This allows us to involve our participants in the shots we’re trying to get, like telling them to speak-to-camera during a moment of suffering during our famed Navy Seal activation. Our goal isn’t simply to create recap content. We’re trying to create an insight into the experiences these individuals are having and the stories they tell through their actions. Big difference.
Have you ever captured a moment you didn’t expect, but it turned out to be a favorite.
It’s always exciting to capture a high energy workout, whether it’s Murph, a 10 mile run, or an underwater fitness activation, but there’s beauty in stillness. That’s why out of all the activations during a given weekend, Francesca Sipma’s breathwork sessions have the most impact on me. These sessions allow our participants to uncover and express the root causes of their emotions (both positive and negative), and being able to capture those incredibly intimate experiences on camera…the tears, the body shakes, the stories that get shared, it’s something I look forward to capturing each and every summit.
