The light up here doesn’t give a shit about my plans. It’s volcanic, primal, the kind of unforgiving brilliance that strips away pretense and leaves me with nothing but the raw fact of a human body suspended against oblivion. Babatunji of LINES Ballet is launching himself into that void above Mafate, and my finger’s on the shutter, heart hammering like I’m trying to steal fire from the gods themselves.
This isn’t some sanitized studio shoot with softboxes and assistants fussing over reflectors while the Creative Director drinks his cappuccino in the corner. This is a mountain that still remembers being born in flame, air so thin it makes you light headed and reckless, and a dancer who moves like he’s arguing with gravity and winning. Every leap is a middle finger to physics, to safety, to the very reasonable human instinct that says don’t launch yourself off a cliff edge.
I’m chasing him through the viewfinder, trying to capture that split second where the human body becomes pure kinetic poetry, where sinew and will transcend the mundane geometry of bones. The wind’s whipping across the caldera, and there’s something darkly honest about that. No safety net. No second take with better lighting. Just the desperate communion between photographer and subject, both of us reaching for something that exists only in that impossible moment of suspension.
