Nikolai Linares

"Sometimes my fellow photographers in Denmark tease me that I'm a sports photographer, even though everyone knows I'm not," says Danish photojournalist and Canon Ambassador Nikolai Linares.

Born in Elsinore in 1983, Nikolai shoots news events and portraits for national press outlets, alongside multi-award-winning personal projects focusing on sportspeople, from boxers and bullfighters to ice hockey players and ageing footballers. "I just love the stories within sports. There's always a climax, there's always sacrifice, there's so much drama. I used to look at sports categories of competitions and it was often just six images with no story. I thought, 'Where's the good sports reportage?' There's so much going on in sport. Why not show everything?"

In the years since then he's built up an impressive client list, featured in the Berlingske newspaper and Stern and VICE magazines, and accrued a heap of awards and accolades – including nominations at the Danish Picture of the Year for six consecutive years.

In 2016, he took the top prize in the Professional sport category of a prestigious international photography competition for Second Best, a powerful portrait series showing boxers fresh from losing their final match in a national tournament. "The winner is the guy everyone remembers and the one who comes second is forgotten. I wanted to give them a name and a face," he says.

This award provided funding and support to shoot another major project, The Boys and the Bulls, following young trainee bullfighters in Spain, which went on to win third prize in the Sports Stories category of the 2018 World Press Photo Contest. "That was a childhood dream come true," he says. "But when I shoot a story I don't think, 'This could be the one that wins a competition!' because you never know what you're up against or the judges' tastes. You do something you like and maybe you're lucky. I just want to share stories with as many people as possible."

How do you come up with ideas for new projects?

"Often something just catches my eye. The Real Old Boys came up because I was at a playground with my son and saw some elderly men playing football on a pitch nearby. I went home, looked on the internet and discovered Denmark was the only country in the world that had a 70+ league, so I contacted them. I could have just not seen them but I'm very curious."


What's the relationship between your self-initiated and commissioned work?

"I see them as quite separate. With editorial, it's not my own idea, sometimes I have a matter of hours to shoot it, so it's difficult to get into a story – when I'm working for newspapers I might have half an hour to take a portrait. I try to put myself into it but often it's just a craft. I know what I'm doing with my camera and my lights and I have a customer who needs to be happy."


When you're shooting a portrait in just half an hour, how do you build rapport with a subject?

"I make eye contact, try to be as nice as I can and make people feel comfortable by talking to them. When I arrive at their home, I'll ask them about it, I won't just walk in with my camera. Actors are used to being photographed but many people hate having their picture taken so we have to have a laugh together so they think it wasn't that bad, maybe that it was actually fun."


Is editing, as much as shooting, an important part of your process?

"Yes. There's a big difference in having 10 great shots and having a story. I look at my stuff every night to see which way the story's going and what's missing. Sometimes stories change direction so I ask myself, 'What am I trying to say here?' In the end, it's all about the sequence."

Nikolai Linares