Interview with Jacques Marais

“Magic hour happens on the mountain, not under your duvet. Get your ass up there..!” Jacques Marais

Jacques Marais rates as one of South Africa’s most long-standing and respected adventure photo-journalists. He’s been around the proverbial block, covering and photographing action sports around the world for three decades. Jacques is an elected ambassador for a range of premium photography and sporting brands, including PENTAX, SONY XPERIA, GIANT, TOMTOM and 3LEGGED-THING. He has also authored more than a dozen outdoor guidebooks, is an award-winning GETTY photographer, and regularly contributes features to premium publications in South Africa and abroad.

Jacques, aka #TomTomBandit, as happy as an otter to have found the G-Spot along the route of the Otter African Trail Run©Jacques Marais

Just as I’ve done with every one of the 14 great photographers I’ve featured in this series, I asked Jacques to choose his top 10 favourite from his image selection for me to use in this article. Instead, he’s chosen to give me an off-the-cuff gallery of ‘moments’ that spiked memories for him from the past 30 years of shooting – he told me he chose them more for the way they time-machined him back to those specific moments.

LD: Straight for the jugular: what’s your age?

JM: 54 … That’s why most people call me ‘The Oom’.

Adventure couple Martin Dreyer and Jeannie Bomford, aka The Beast and The Bomb, always make for a brilliant shoot, no matter what the circumstances. Martin likes pushing the envelope, but no matter how far he goes, Jeannie is always there to step it up another notch. ©Jacques Marais

LD: Did you ditch another career for the adventures of photography?

JM: Yup, I studied electronic engineering at Wits, and then worked for the SABC. Taking photos was a childhood hobby, but as a staunch boerseun I never saw this as a ‘real job’. That early flirtation with the lens never faded though, and it flared up again when I started a below-the-line creative agency in Cape Town in the mid-90s. My passions always drove the projects I took on, and a decade of hard graft resulted in a focus on outdoor sport and adventure.

Desert marathon world champion Ryan Sandes, training on the dunes in Silvermine Nature Reserve near Cape Town for Racing The Planet’s sub-zero 7-day stage race in Antarctica in 2010 ©Jacques Marais

LD: I know you cover loads of adventure sports, and trail running isn’t the most dramatic of them. Give us some insight into what you cover.

JM: The list really is endless, but the bulk of my work focuses on adventure travel, with a strong slant towards mountain biking and trail running. Premier events include the OTTER African Trail Run, Tour de Tuli, Desert Knights, the incredible Ride4Lions, and the like. I live for once-off unique adrenaline projects, like shooting the Adidas crew who slacklined across Vic Falls, or dog sledding in eastern Greenland with Inuit hunters.

Arguably the most adrenalin-charged shoot of my life … I joined forces with ADIDAS (Europe) to shoot this incredible world record attempt by a German and Austrian duo who walked the ‘NyamiNyami Line’ across Batoka Gorge, at Vic Falls. They conquered their fears and the inch-wide line, with the full might of the Zambezi thundering besides them, while I clambered amongst monstrous cliffs of this great river. ©Jacques Marais

LD: There must be a few hair-raising moments in your memory bank. Any near-misses you can tell us about?

JM: Nothing gets you out of your comfort zone quite like heading into polar territory … us southern hemisphere laaities have no real clue as to how to read snow and ice, so my two adventures into eastern Greenland do stand out. A plunge into an ice crevasse, tracking a polar bear and sea kayaking amidst giant icebergs with narwhales – not to mention -37 deg Celsius temperatures at night in our flimsy tents – had me questioning my sanity. My toughest trail run shoot would be in France along the unrelenting peaks of the Grand Raid des Pyrenees – utterly breathtaking, in all senses of the word.

The very early days of trail for Christiaan Greyling, arguably one of the hardest-working athletes I’ve ever photographed. This was shot in one of the cave sections during the Oorlogskloof Trail Run, near Nieuwoudtville, and was probably the first time I realised how much potential lurked within ‘Landie’s running partner’. The proof is in the pudding when you look at what he has achieved since then. ©Jacques Marais

LD: What’s the most extreme shoot you’ve done (any sport)?

JM: This would be a toss-up between the slacklining shoot at Victoria Falls and the Arctic Team Challenge on Ammassalik Island, in the southeast Greenland. We were on a narrow saddle a couple of metres wide at most, with hundreds of metres of thin air dropping onto shard-like rocks way, way below us. There was precious little in the line of safety, except for a few sections of frayed rope here and there. The Vic Falls shoot had us negotiate the white-water rapids atop the falls in a teeny little boat with a motor that cut out every now and then. During the shoot, I had to scramble along the slippery edge of the ‘Smoke that Thunders’, but the shots made it all worthwhile.

Adventurer Andrew Kellet tests a range of #S2S gear while kayaking, SUPing and coasteering along the False Bay coastline near Simonstown, near Cape Point, South Africa ©Jacques Marais

LD: What has been your most memorable trail running shoot and why?

JM: Look, I have to admit that the Grand Raid des Pyrenees and Raid International Gaspesie in Quebec are right up there – both races are jaw-droppingly beautiful. BUT few events in the world could compare to the OTTER African Trail Run; in my opinion, it rates as one of the ultimate trail races in the world. Remote beaches, sea-cliff scrambles, trippy forest single-track, extreme altitude gain, technical coasteering, and views to die for make this a gruelling challenge for top competitors from around the globe.

I joined Hano Smit, Graham Bird, Andre Gie and Tatum Prins during the Adventure Racing World Champs in Brazil in 2008, shooting mainly for Sports Illustrated (I think) at the time … The awesome foursome found themselves up on a Brazilian desert dune at race start. It reminded me of a Marathon des Sables scene as all the teams charged through the sand. ©Jacques Marais

LD: What has been the most compromising position you’ve had to be in for a shoot?

JM: Impossible to say… I’ve been charged by a black rhino in Swaziland, and was narrowly missed by a rampant buffalo bull who seriously injured two of my companions on an iSimangaliso trail scout. A climbing shoot with Justin Hawkins on the sea-cliffs overlooking False Bay saw me on a precarious ledge, but the image was a finalist in the Red Bull Illume Extreme Sports Photographic Contest. More recently, I donned a Borat mankini to cheer Peter Van Kets up along our mountain bike ride from Angola to Swakop… that definitely classified as a compromising position!

Endurance trail runner AJ Calitz, shot for a CAPE UNION MART advertorial in INTREPID XPLORER Magazine, on location in the Glencairn Valley, Cape Town. ©Jacques Marais

A dawn mission onto Elsie’s Peak with Landie Greyling, Peter Kirk and the Trail Ballie himself – Noel Oupa Ernstzen – rock-hopping along the precipitous cliff edges spearing high above False Bay. (Stuart ‘Doctor Mooove’ Hutcheson was hiding in the fynbos, smoking his buchu pipe). ©Jacques Marais

I love this shot of Meg Levinson (not sure she will agree though) I took during a Salomon shoot on the peaks above Kalk Bay. There were some cracker images of her blasting along the mountain trails, then the wind came up and nearly blew her off the summit rocks. This is one of a sequence of her getting her balance back (and collecting her wits). These are the images that never get published but reveal a little of the humanity of the trail idols. ©Jacques Marais

Martin Dreyer on an Altiplano rock face overlooking the Bolivian plains far below, during the Land Rover G4 Challenge in Bolivia, 2006. This world-class paddler and adventure racer once again proved his innate physical capabilities and never-say-die attitude when he stormed to victory in this incredibly tough multi-sport event in South America ©Jacques Marais

Anne-Marie Dunhill organised me this amazing shoot at the Grand Raid des Pyrenees Ultra Trail Run in France in 2011, for which I am forever grateful. This was around 30km into the 160km trail run, with a ‘Stairway to Hell’ feel as the runners ascended the steep scree slopes. The green European landscape ‘popped’ so much that I had to shoot some monochrome to make the landscape less surreal. ©Jacques Marais

Trail runners on a recce run along the Ultra-Trail Cape Town route on the Devil’s Peak section of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. ©Jacques Marais

Follow Jacques on Twitter at @jacqmaraisphoto and check out his work on www.jacquesmarais.co.za

3LEGGED-THING, AJ Calitz, Andre Gie, Andrew Kellet, Arctic Team Challenge, Christiaan Greyling, Desert Knights, GIANT, Graham Bird, Grand Raid Pyrenees, Hano Smit, iSimangaliso, Jeannie Bomford, Justin Hawkins, Landie Greyling, Martin Dreyer, Meg Levinson, Otter African Trail Run, PENTAX, Peter Kirk, Peter van Kets, Raid International Gasperie, Red Bull Illume Extreme Sports photographic contest, Ride4Lions, Ryan Sandes, slacklining Victoria Falls, SONY XPERIA, Tatum Prins, TOMTOM, Tour de Tuli, Ultra-Trail Cape Town

Author

Linda Doke

I'm an ultra trail runner by passion, and a journalist by profession - in that order of priority. I've been running for about 23 years, always with a preference for ultras. I have to admit, I was a roadie for the first 10 years, but I came to my senses in 2004, when I moved to Cape Town and found trail. And I've never looked back... Since 2008 I've been a Salomon athlete, and I remain ever-proudly Salomon.

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