If you look closely under the red umbrella at the centre of this photo, you’ll see four distant feet. The anonymous duo they belong to had just taken off on a parasailing trip above the sea at Nice in the south of France, captured by Hannibal Renberg with his iPhone 10 while on holiday.
“I was walking down the Promenade des Anglais and noticed these people on the bench. They were by the beach in high summer, but with umbrellas up. Just below them is the canopy belonging to a parasailing company, and they seemed to be watching the world go by. It was serendipitous timing to capture the parachute in flight where it is. I only had time to get a couple of shots.”
Renberg, who is French, defines himself as a street photographer with the simple aim of making people feel something when they see his work. “This isn’t reportage, and there is no complex message or meaning here. But if one of my images makes someone smile, or feel sad, or feel anything, that’s good enough for me.”
He used the apps Instamatic and Snapseed to capture and edit the photo. “But not too much, or it becomes artificial. You always need a good subject to make the photo interesting.”
Renberg has been taking photographs since he was 17 – he’s in his 50s now – and often ditches the big cameras he long relied on. “When you use a big camera, everyone looks at you. It’s better to be subtle.”
