Up close, Predrag Vuckovic looks a little bit like Hollywood star Jason Statham. His black T-shirt bears the legend “extreme photographer” over the chest, on the sleeve is a logo for Nikon. His burly physique owes as much to his interest in bodybuilding as it does to the daredevil sports he’s spent a lifetime pursuing, and photographing.

In the packed confines of the Piramal Gallery at the NCPA, Mumbai, Predrag’s completely at ease as he takes the crowd of students and photographers through the highs of a career spent shooting the most spectacular extreme sports stunts performed world over, as part of the Red Bull Action Workshop. Predrag’s talk — delivered in a heavy accent and peppered with a dry, deadpan humour — lasts for three hours. But every time he takes a break and asks the audience if he should go on, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”.
Predrag’s journey as a photographer began alongside his journey as a sportsperson. Whether he was riding a BMX in a freestyle championship or snowboarding, his camera went along with him. Rollerblading, skateboarding, windsurfing, diving, bodybuilding — even setting up one of the most successful health clubs in Serbia, as well as two popular magazines — Predrag’s interests were varied, but photography remained a constant. The gradual transition from extreme sportsperson to professional extreme photographer, Predrag describes as “my way of still staying part of the world, as I was getting older and slower (with the stunts)”.
An image he shot of youngsters wakeboarding through the flooded streets of his hometown, Belgrade (Serbia) in 2005, was a defining one for Predrag. Soon, he was shooting base jumps from the highest building in Sarajevo, Bosnia, photographing a motor racing team at the Kardung La pass in Ladakh, biking star Robbie Maddison’s jump across the Corinth Canal, Valery Rozov’s “volcano jump” at Kamachatka, and Felix Baumgartner’s record breaking jump from the stratosphere — only a fraction of his assignments, which included a lot of underwater photography and a 35-day expedition to Antartica as well. For all of these assignments, Predrag managed to shoot stunning images that captured the athlete, the action and the environment all coming together in the most perfect moment.
“I’m proud that I’ve never come home without a shot,” says Predrag — quite an achievement considering that a shoot may see him submerged in a cold river for hours, or shooting off the back of a helicopter, while he manoeuvres multiple cameras and remote settings to capture a moment that lasts mere seconds. Predrag says his own experience as an extreme sportsperson helps considerably. “If you want to be an action photographer, you have to understand what you are doing, you have to understand what the athletes are doing, and it’s important to understand the tricks they are doing,” he explains.
He often hears people put down his penchant for capturing the optimal moment in a stunt to luck, or to just being in the right place at the right time. “Everything in action photography is about the right moment — and you can’t learn that in school or college. You have to understand what you are doing to get the right moment. Luck — that’s just a small part of it. Most of it is about good planning and good organising,” Predrag says.
When those wanting to pursue action photography ask Predrag for advice, he tells them to plan all projects exhaustively, treat safety as a priority, learn the right equipment to use and follow their own style. He adds that it’s important to get to know the athletes you’re shooting: “I always interact with the athletes before shooting, share as many details as I can about the project — once you do that, you will get much more than just a man or a woman in the picture, it will be something more than that.”
And as someone who’s shot some of the best extreme athletes in the world, Predrag has an insider’s view of what fuels their quest for high adrenaline action. “People think extreme athletes are crazy, but they’re not. These people are super trained, super smart and super focused,” he says, using his favourite appreciative adjective.
There’s always a lot of interest in the equipment that helps Predrag gets his super spectacular images, and from a compact black suitcase, he removes his two Nikon cameras, five different types of lenses, colour converter, two hard drives, a card reader, cables and wires, three remote controls, a cleaning cloth and lots of memory cards. A generator and a special camera (such as for underwater photography), may also accompany him. Then there’s an innocuous looking “duty free” shopping bag that Predrag jokes he uses to ferry some of his cameras past airline staff.
How Predrag works is explained. The why — not completely. Predrag’s words on why he likes underwater photography offer an answer though: “I like it because it’s not the usual,” he says. “I like it because it’s a challenge.”