Diving into the blue sky, watched by the Eiffel Tower

Aurelien Morissard is a freelance photojournalist. He has been working regularly for The Associated Press in France since 2022.

Here’s what he had to say about this extraordinary photo taken in Paris.

Why this photo?

This high-diving sequence from the Bir-Hakeim Bridge, with a view of the Eiffel Tower, was the event not to be missed during the first week of the European Aquatics Championships in France. It was what all the photographers were waiting for.

I knew there was something really beautiful to create with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The challenge was getting access to the right locations to make the shot.

At first, we were offered some positions that weren’t particularly exciting. So, we negotiated to get access to different photographer positions during the divers’ training sessions. That’s when I took this photograph.

Because on the official competition day, we normally wouldn’t have had access to that location.

How I made this photo

That day, we only had 30 minutes to take our photos. The impact with the water is so intense that the divers can’t do too many jumps during their training.

At first, we were slightly off axis from the diving platform. The photos were beautiful, but they weren’t spectacular enough.

So I positioned myself on the 10-meter platform, underneath the 20-meter platform where the divers were training, in order to have the divers falling more directly in line with the Eiffel Tower.

The dive happens extremely quickly, and the most beautiful part of the diver’s movement is at the very beginning of the jump.

I set my camera with a relatively narrow aperture to retain as much detail as possible in the image, and I used a sufficiently fast shutter speed to freeze the movement. From where I was positioned, the fall lasts barely three seconds, so you have to react immediately from the very beginning.

Why it works

Of all the photos I took during the training sessions and the competition, this one is my favorite. It’s minimalist. You only see part of the Eiffel Tower, some clouds and a diver who looks like an angel — or a bird — with his arms wide open.

I would have already loved the photograph with just this section of the Eiffel Tower. But by adding the diver to the composition, the image takes on a whole new artistic dimension.