How Torino 2019 photographers freeze skating's defining moments
Photographing a Grand Prix Final is a bit like trying to bottle a lightning strike while standing on a polished floor. At Palavela, where the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final runs from December 5 to 8, 2019, the photography crew has roughly four seconds of program time to land a quad toe loop, a throw triple Axel, or a soaring rotational lift on a single frame that will define an athlete's season. The team has built its reputation on those frozen instants, and the way they plan, shoot, and edit tells a story of precision that rivals anything happening on the ice.
For viewers tuning in from Melbourne, Sydney, or a screen in Perth with the time-zone lag working against them, the result often arrives as a sequence of flawless stills on social feeds hours after the medal ceremony. Behind every crisp image of a flying sit spin sits a coordinated operation of positions, lenses, lighting calculations, and editorial judgement. Pulling back the curtain shows just how much craft goes into every frame a skating fan scrolls past between tram stops or arvo coffee runs.
The brief: defining the visual story before the music starts
Before a single skater steps onto the ice at Palavela, the photography lead sits down with the event's editorial team to map out the visual priorities for the week. They discuss which moments matter most: the opening pose of each program, the airborne peak of a jump, the catch-foot layover in an ice dance lift, and the final bow after a free skate. That brief sets the tone for the entire shoot and dictates where bodies are positioned around the 1,200-seat arena.
The plan prioritises the Italian skaters at Palavela, because home-federation expectations run high and the press demand from local outlets is constant. Coordination with national federations, broadcast partners, and the ISU communications office ensures that coverage priorities align and no athlete is overwhelmed by competing camera positions. It is the kind of logistical dance any Australian event photographer who has covered a Matildas friendly or a Big Bash match will recognise: manage the angles, manage the access, and never miss the headline moment.
A second planning session is held mid-week, once the rhythm of the competition has settled, to recalibrate based on early results. If a surprise skater from a smaller federation breaks into the lead, the photo plan reshuffles to put that athlete at the centre of the next session's coverage. The same scramble happens in Australian sports newsrooms when an unfancied swimmer wins a Pan Pacs gold or a young fast bowler takes five on debut.
The kit: cameras, lenses, and monopods built for ice
The standard body for the Torino 2019 photo team is a professional mirrorless flagship paired with a rugged DSLR backup, both chosen for high frame rates and low-light performance. Rink lighting at international figure skating events is dramatic but uneven, with strong overhead key lights and deep shadows at the corners of the ice. A camera that can comfortably push past ISO 6400 without speckled noise is non-negotiable, especially during the senior pairs free skate, when shutter speeds must stay above 1/1000s to freeze a triple twist.
Lenses range from a 16-35mm wide for establishing shots, through a 24-70mm standard zoom for warm-up moments and medal ceremonies, to the workhorses of the job: 70-200mm f/2.8 and 300mm f/2.8 telephotos. The 300mm is the favourite for capturing the precise moment a skater throws a triple Lutz, when arms extend and the body forms its tightest aerial shape. A monopod is mandatory because rink-side photographers stand for hours, and a stabilised monopod lets them swing from one end of the rink to the other without sacrificing sharpness.
The gear is also weatherised, because Palavela keeps the rink surface around minus four degrees Celsius, and condensation can fog a non-sealed lens the moment it leaves a warm press room. A small chamois cloth and silica packets become everyday tools, much like sunscreen and a wide-brim hat on a summer assignment at the Australian Open. The team also carries a dedicated laptop with fast card readers, redundant batteries, and at least one external drive cleared and formatted before each session.
The rink-side game plan: positioning around four disciplines
Each discipline at the Final demands a different shooting rhythm, and the team rotates positions to match. For men's and ladies' singles, photographers cluster at the rink corner opposite the judges' entrance, an angle that captures both the take-off and landing of every jump. Ice dance shooters work more centrally, because the discipline is about edges, holds, and curved patterns that read best from a slightly elevated press box perspective. Pairs photography splits the difference, requiring both a side angle that shows a side-by-side spin and a head-on position to catch the death-grip hand-to-hand lifts.
Junior events, which run alongside the senior competition at Palavela, add another layer of unpredictability. Junior skaters are still growing into their bodies, so timing the apex of a jump takes more guesswork, and the photographers widen their buffer to account for that variation. The team also keeps one shooter in the kiss-and-cry zone to catch the raw emotion when a score is announced, an angle Australian audiences watching replays at home will see but rarely appreciate fully because the broadcast cut rarely lingers on the tearful faces beneath the glitter.
A side-by-side read of these priorities helps frame what fans will find in the official galleries and on the ISU photo wire, though photographers still swap tips over coffee when one angle proves more flattering than another.
| Discipline | Defining Shot | Preferred Angle | Typical Lens | Burst Rate Need |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men's Singles | Quad jump apex | Rink corner, judges' side | 300mm f/2.8 | 12-14 fps |
| Ladies' Singles | Triple-triple combo | Long side, low angle | 70-200mm f/2.8 | 10-12 fps |
| Pairs | Twist lift catch | Head-on, low | 70-200mm and 400mm | 12-14 fps |
| Ice Dance | Curved pattern or lift | Elevated press box | 24-70mm and 70-200mm | 8-10 fps |
| Junior Singles | First clean triple | Rink corner, judges' side | 300mm f/2.8 | 10-12 fps |
The edit: sorting thousands of frames into a story
A senior free skate generates somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 images per photographer, and the team might field six to eight shooters across one program. The first pass in the press room is brutal and fast, with each body culling obvious misses, blurred frames, and shot-through arms. After that initial cut, the lead photo editor looks for what the trade calls the "hero" image, the one frame that conveys the program in a single exposure: a fully extended layback Ina Bauer, a perfectly pointed toe in a choreographic sequence, or the exact instant a partner catches his lady in a one-handed twist lift.
Metadata tagging then takes over, with athletes' names, programme elements, scores, and broadcast reel codes added to every file. The same files flow to the ISU archive, to federations like Skate Australia for downstream coverage of any Aussies in the field, and to commercial partners who have licensed imagery for promotional use. A typical shift ends around midnight Turin time, which is 10am in Sydney, just in time for the next morning's press releases to hit Australian desks over a second cup of coffee.
Press room realities the edit team juggles
- Time-zone coordination with federations spread across Sydney, Moscow, Beijing, and Turin
- File-naming conventions that match the broadcast clip IDs for downstream sync
- Quick turnaround for federation press kits when a hometown skater makes the podium
- Hero image selection that respects the athlete's personal brand and feed tone
- Rights management for commercial licensing across editorial and sponsor channels
- Backup protocols across cloud and physical drives before any card leaves the building
On the ground: logistics that make the shot possible
Behind every well-lit photograph is a support network of volunteers, technicians, and venue staff who keep the photographers in the right place at the right time. The Palavela press operations team handles credential distribution, allocates pit positions between periods of on-ice activity, and coordinates with broadcast to avoid camera clashes. Rink-side spots are like seats at the SCG during a Test match: prized, fought over, and respected once assigned.
The volunteer photographers, drawn from local Turin universities and Italian sports-photography schools, are paired with senior shooters for their first season and given clearly defined roles, usually as secondary wide-angle operators or portrait specialists. Many will travel to the next ISU event with sharpened skills, and a few will eventually work Australian winter events, summer ice shows, or even the Australian Figure Skating Championships, where the same technical discipline applies on a smaller stage.
Travel logistics matter too. International photo agencies fly in kit ahead of time, and customs paperwork for high-value professional bodies and long lenses is handled weeks in advance. Anybody who has tried to bring a 400mm prime into Australia without declaring it knows the paperwork involved, so the Torino team treats freight as seriously as focus. Backups of every card, both physical and cloud, leave Turin with the shooters on departure day, because losing an unrepeatable moment would be far worse than a missed flight.
Moments that always demand extra frames
- The opening pose of a free skate, where choreography sets the tone
- The triple jump apex, when the body forms its tightest aerial shape
- The throw jump landing, where snow sprays from the partner's toe pick
- The death drop or spiral sequence, with arms extended and free leg pointed
- The kiss-and-cry reaction, raw and unfiltered under the lights
- The exhibition gala bow, where the season's emotional arc resolves
For Australian figure skating fans, the photography team's work is the closest thing to a second seat at the rink. Browse the official galleries, follow the social feeds during competition week, and if you can spare a few days in early December, consider a trip to Turin to experience the lens-side perspective in person. Tickets, practice-session passes, and volunteer registration are all available through the official Torino 2019 site, where the Palavela press team will capture every defining moment along the way.