The ability to make something complex seem simple is a sign of true mastery, whether in athletics, the arts, or everyday life. This is especially true when it comes to creating images and in the world of mountain bike photography, JB Liautard has consistently shown a penchant for pushing the envelope.

In a professional career spanning less than a decade, the passionate young Frenchman has made a name for himself through his imaginative yet methodical approach to producing images that capture the sheer essence of a moment, blending it seamlessly with the majesty of its surroundings. His fascination with light, landscapes, and motion—and the challenge of harnessing all three into a single harmony with timeless resonance—has led to an ever-mounting portfolio of unforgettable images that straddle the line between reality and fantasy.

Though the final results appear crisp and uncomplicated, Liautard’s methods are any- thing but simple. Braving often-harsh environmental conditions with a formidable arsenal of lights, strobes, mirrors, and flying objects—all bolstered by his patience and persistence—he creates photographs that immortalize time, place, and subject in a mesmerizing twinkle of virtuosity. The following is a collection of Liautard’s finest images, along with his thoughts on what inspired him to create them.

The unique desert terrain of Utah has long fascinated me. I’ve been increasingly inspired by aerial photography and whenever I find an opportunity to get out to the desert, I try to fly my drone as much as possible—which is exactly what I did during a trip to Utah earlier this year. I find that the desert often reveals all of its beauty and geologic complexity from the air.

Living in Lyon, France, this circular structure in the middle of a giant parking garage has always intrigued me. I continue to go there to this very day to marvel over this remarkable architectural feat. A couple of years after I’d seriously started pursuing photography, I realized this place was only a few minutes’ walk from my home and I knew I had to do something there. I called my friend Nicolas Terrier, a really good slopestyle rider who’s always up to shoot something a bit different, and we went there to try to figure something out. The structure features a huge rotating mirror at the bottom, with a big spiral road where the cars go up to the exit. I put strobes on each side of the road, but the timing was tricky because a lot of cars were going up between our test shots and the window through which you can see Nico jumping is actually kind of small. This was my first photo mixing architecture and bikes.

This wasn’t my first time getting close to a volcano with Kilian Bron, but this trip to Guatemala’s Volcán de Fuego was the one that had the most impact on me. This stratovolcano is one of the most active in the world, with an eruption every 15 to 20 minutes. But the most violent eruption in the last four years occurred the night we were there. The nearby villages were evacuated, and the park closed immediately after we entered. In this picture, we were just about one mile from another volcano. The lava in the background was thrown at least 1,300 feet above the crater throughout the entire night without interruption.

I spend a significant amount of time documenting the lifestyle surrounding moun- tain biking, and I would say more than 75 percent of my work isn’t action photos. In this picture, I wanted to illustrate the end of a session in the rain. I used two orange flashes to backlight the scene of Paul Couderc spraying off his bike to enhance the texture and highlight the particles of water flying through the air.

I’ve always found inspiration in all forms of water, and I had the idea of this shot when looking at water droplets on a glass door while taking a shower. To achieve this image, I used a system made of a mirror, a glass plate, and water droplets. The rider, Belgian Thomas Genon, was doing a bunny-hop barspin in a parking lot. I was shooting with a macro lens in dark conditions, really close to the glass plate and water droplets.

I’ve been around the world, but when I went to Bolivia in 2022 it really took my breath away. The Valle de las Animas, a valley filled with densely packed rock clusters near La Paz, is one of the craziest geologic formations I’ve ever seen. The mud-rock monoliths look otherworldly, whether you look at them from the ground or the sky.

Shooting in bad weather might be my favorite thing to do, but it’s always a challenge for athletes when it comes to riding in adverse conditions. At the end of a day of shooting near the village of Ponte de Lima, Portugal, the weather took a turn for the worse. I asked Spanish downhill racer Angel Suárez Alonso if he was keen to shoot at the top of a mountain in the clouds. When we got there it was very stormy, and we only had one try to get the shot before we had to go back into our van and dry all of our gear.