How far would you go? Meet three image-makers pushing creativity to the limit

There are some people for whom photography and video is more than a job. Even more than a passion. It's like an itch they can't shake off. They'll travel to remote places, endure extreme heat, undertake hair-raising physical challenges. They'll spend hours meticulously crafting a scene they've sketched out or imagined beforehand. They'll test the limits of their kit – and their own stamina. They're not satisfied with anything less than perfection.

Here, three image-makers – an adventure videographer, a food photographer and a visual artist – discuss how, in different ways, their restless creativity pushes them to go to wild lengths in pursuit of the perfect shot.

Jake Baggaley has always loved adventure sports. Professionally, he started out shooting editorial and documentary photography but soon realised that he could combine his love of image-making and the outdoors. "A lot of the work I do these days is fun stuff that I'd want to be doing anyway," says Jake, although, to most people, his idea of fun – racing through rainforests, dangling off mountain ledges – can seem pretty extreme. "I like to be embedded in the situation that I'm photographing so I'm seeing it from the perspective of the person doing the sport.

"If I'm doing climbing shots, instead of photographing or filming the subject from far away, I'll be abseiling down the rock too. I want the images to feel intimate, like you're really part of the action," he continues. "It's the same with shots of runners. I'll be running alongside the athletes." It helps that Jake has a background in mountain running, something he still does as a hobby, which gives him a base level of fitness that means he's ready to take on gruelling physical challenges.

On the surface, food photography doesn't sound like the most dangerous genre – you're not dodging lions in the Serengeti, after all. And yet, Belfast-based Sharon Cosgrove has had her fair share of injuries – falling off ladders, steps and rickety chairs trying to capture her edible subjects from the perfect angle. But the biggest sacrifice she's made to achieve the innovative, mouth-watering images for which she's known, is time. "A shot can equate to days of research, prop hunting and set building," she says. Throwing herself into a shoot means missing out on socialising with friends and family – tough, but worth it when she gets what she's after.

Canon Ambassador Eliška Sky's work always begins in the same way – with an idea for something she wants to say. Where it might go after that is anyone's guess. The Czech artist, fashion photographer and art director has a richly surreal imagination and a dogged determination to turn the fantastical images in her head into reality. "I like to be innovative, to create things that haven't been seen before," she says. "Making something unique and unexpected is always challenging. It takes a lot of planning, big teams, complicated set designs. But if it's too easy, what's the point?"

For one shoot, she filmed a model on a specially-constructed two-metre-high plexiglass plinth. Eliška used a wind machine along with props such as scarves and colourful balls to build the exact atmosphere she was after. "There was one point where I was lying down under the plexiglass table, and you could see my reflection in shot, so I had to get someone to cover me with a black blanket and shoot from underneath it," she says. Working with the Canon EOS R5 she found the autofocus tracking made a huge difference. "It kept the focus really nicely on the model as she was moving. The 4K video capture and frame rate of the R5 were also great features as I was trying to get slow motion footage of the balls in the air."

Working on another campaign in January 2021, Eliška built a 6x6m swimming pool inside a studio. "It was unheated, on a concrete floor, and in the middle of winter. We only had two days, so we had to get the shots," she recalls. To make sure the models were comfortable, Eliška and her team ran back and forth boiling kettles and topping up the water. Another example of going to crazy lengths to get a shot was on an editorial shoot inspired by Picasso's blue period, when she laboriously painted all the models and the entire studio bright blue. "I'm inspired by everything around me," she says. "Literature, film, photography, everyday situations, even something as simple as light and shadow."