Martin Bissig

Swiss outdoor action photographer Martin Bissig has been working as a full-time photographer for around 20 years, specialising in action, outdoor and adventure sports with a strong focus on reportage. Mountain biking is where he started and it remains part of his work, but moving images now sit alongside stills as an equal part of what he delivers.

Martin's career has been driven by his three great passions: photography, mountain biking and the great outdoors. Encouraged by his father, a freelance photographer who shot for a range of newspapers, photography was the first passion to take hold. Eager to learn, Martin began experimenting with cameras from the age of seven, making the most of his father's equipment and their home darkroom. At 13 he was covering assignments when his father was busy on other jobs. Around this time Martin began mountain biking, the ideal sport for a teenager growing up in one of the world's most mountainous and scenic countries.

Martin’s images have appeared in countless magazines internationally, and he is considered to be one of the most published mountain bike photographers in the world. "I typically publish about three stories a year," he says. "Each gets published between 10 and 20 times, so I usually end up in about 50 different publications all over the world, in more than 25 countries. Each publication holds between four and eight pages, plus the cover, so I'm extremely fortunate to have had tonnes of my pictures published."

He believes that being a keen mountain biker himself has helped to make his work stand out. "I love mountain biking," he says. "In photography, to be good at what you do, you have to take pictures of things you like. If I was to shoot people playing snooker, or riding horses, it wouldn't work as well. As a sports photographer, it's important that you know, and love, the sport yourself, because you need to know how people move and what looks right."

Today Martin develops most of his stories himself and delivers them complete: stills, film and text from the same trip. That is what he brings to the brands he works with, not a set of single images but a whole story they can use. Recent examples include a 600km gravel expedition along the Zambezi and a ski touring project in Pakistan's Karakorum. Alongside his own stories he shoots commercially for brands and for tourism destinations in Switzerland and abroad.

His photography has been recognised internationally. Martin was a Gold Medal Winner at the 2026 World Sports Photography Awards in the Urban and Extreme category, and at the 2023 Red Bull Illume Image Quest he reached the semi finals with two images and the final with one.

His filmmaking has followed the same path. On Royal Trails, his documentary from Bhutan, was an official selection at more than 15 international film festivals across four continents, among them the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, Fort William Mountain Festival, Ladek Mountain Festival, Lookout Wild Film Festival and the World Trails Film Festival, and it won the Travel Film Festival. He has been a Canon Europe Ambassador and Canon Academy Coach since January 2019, one of two Swiss photographers in the programme, and his work has appeared in National Geographic, GEO and CNN as well as in productions for Swiss national television.

How do you execute your creative vision for a shoot?

"Generally, I have just an idea of a country I want to visit, or an area I want to go. Once there, I'll go with the flow. I don't have specific ideas or images I want to capture. I let myself be surprised by what the country or area holds for me. It's difficult to plan anyway; sometimes there isn't any information available about the area."


What are you looking for from the scene and the rider when you fire the shutter?

"I want to tell a story in one image so I prefer to shoot wide. I want to create a certain perspective: to show the viewers where we are, the nature, the trails, the action. I need a good landscape, a good trail, good light and a good rider. If that all comes together, I've got my shot."


What's the creative reasoning behind your usual setup?

"I always shoot in Aperture priority (Av) mode, and I need to make sure the shutter speed is fast enough for action. I use a higher ISO setting to avoid motion blur. I used to shoot a lot with flash, but nowadays I almost never use it. I want to be authentic and photos shot with flash can appear artificial."


What's the trickiest part of a shoot?

"The riders. I can have the best location in the world, in the best possible light, but if the rider sits on the bike like a bag of potatoes, the shot is useless. So, I try to tell a story with a single image. I see what I do more as landscape photography with an additional element – an athlete."


What piece of Canon kit can you not live without, and why?

"The Canon EOS R5 Mark II. On expedition I carry everything I own on my back or on my bike, so every gram has to earn its place. The EOS R5 Mark II is the one body that never forces me to choose between stills and film. It gives me cinema grade moving images and a high resolution mirrorless stills camera in the same housing, which means the magazine feature and the documentary come out of the same bag. It is the reason I can promise my clients a complete story, words, pictures and film, before I have taken a single frame."


What else could we discover in your kitbag that helps you elevate your work?

"A multitool, zip ties, an emergency rain cover, a pair of plastic gloves and a tube of suncream. None of it is glamorous, but on expedition it is what keeps the camera working and me functioning. The gloves are for fixing the bike, or for anything else I would rather not get my hands dirty with, because the next thing I touch is usually the camera."

Martin Bissig