Pelican’s Rampage film puts photographers on the ridge

Marcus Bennett

Pelican’s new documentary short, “Images That Last Forever: Photographing The Red Bull Rampage,” was released to mark Pelican’s 50th anniversary and centres on the photographers behind Red Bull Rampage’s 25-year evolution.

The film turns its attention from the riders’ performances to the photographers working beside the course. Red Bull Rampage counts among mountain biking’s most demanding events, yet its photographers must cross steep, unforgiving terrain with heavy equipment. They often get only one chance to record a defining moment. The result is a craft of timing, mobility and risk.

The film draws on Christian Pondella, Paris Gore and Bartek Wolinski, whose collective coverage spans decades. Together they describe a discipline shaped as much by the mountain and changing light as by the rider’s trajectory. Their repeated work creates a longitudinal record of changes in riding, equipment and photographic method.

Pondella is based in Mammoth Lakes, California, and has photographed every Rampage since the inaugural event in 2001. This year’s competition marked the event’s 25th anniversary and returned it to its original site. That return adds a comparative frame to a short drawing heavily from a photographer who has attended every edition.

“They ride so much differently than they did back then. The sport has evolved, our photography has evolved in that time, the bikes have evolved, the riders have evolved, so over the 25 years, it’s drastic to change from where it started to where it is now,” Pondella says.

The technical and human changes are inseparable in his account. He now photographs riders who were not yet born when he began covering Rampage, yet sees the event’s future in their continued participation. “Hopefully in 25 years this will still be going on, and if it happens I’m going to be here,” he says.

Gore, a Red Bull photographer from Bellingham, Washington, has covered Rampage 13 times. His description strips away the glamour of the finished frame. “Photographing Rampage is a pretty hardcore, physically demanding job,” he says.

“You really have to run around, especially during finals. You could be on one side of the ridge and need to traverse the entire mountain. If you lose [your footing] you could fall off a huge cliff. But I love it.”

The final sentence matters. Gore’s commitment comes from his relationship to the event rather than a detached pursuit of spectacle. The film does not ask photographers to stand apart from the danger; it makes their movement through it part of the work.

Wolinski, a photographer from Poland, is attending his 12th Rampage. He says he “always tries to follow the light before the action.” That priority places his decision-making before the maneuver: the light guides where he stands and what he waits for.

His broader account is less romantic. “In general, Rampage is pretty difficult to photograph,” Wolinski says. “There is a lot of planning involved, but you have to be loose with your plan and adjust when it’s needed.”

A plan can fail when circumstances change. The photographer must keep a plan while accepting that conditions on the mountain set the final terms.

What does the film change for Rampage photography?

It makes the photographer, rather than the rider alone, the protagonist of the event’s visual history. The three accounts connect changes in riding, bicycles and photography, showing a practice shaped across 25 years by experience and altered conditions. Pondella’s continuous attendance turns a sequence of assignments into a longitudinal record of visual change.

For viewers, the practical gain is a clearer understanding of what happens before the published frame: the route across the mountain, the judgment about light, the need to adapt and the exposure to a fall.

Pelican’s anniversary setting places the short inside the institutional world of branded documentary. A brand marking 50 years can use Rampage’s 25-year history to frame persistence, but the film earns more from its practitioners’ exact language than from corporate ceremony.

Their testimony gives the anniversary a professional measure: the work stays demanding because the terrain, the sport and the decisive instant will not wait.

The short’s broader relevance lies in a recurring problem within event photography: preparation has to become judgment the moment conditions change. Pondella’s memory, Gore’s physical account and Wolinski’s method make that process visible without reducing the pictures to spectacle.

Its forward-looking note comes from Pondella himself: after another quarter-century, he expects Rampage to continue and expects to remain there to photograph it.