There’s something quietly fascinating about the way Getty Images continues to push visual storytelling at the Winter Olympics, and its latest series, Winter Heat, feels like another confident step into unfamiliar but compelling territory.
Shot using the best thermal imaging cameras at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, the project strips away surface detail to reveal something we rarely consider while watching the spectacle unfold: the sheer physical extremes athletes endure in sub-zero environments.
Thermal imaging isn’t photography in the traditional sense. It doesn’t rely on light, shadow, or color as we know them, but instead translates temperature into a spectrum of heat signatures. The result is a palette of glowing oranges, reds, blues, and purples that leans far more toward modern art than classical photographic expression. And yet, within that abstraction lies a raw truth. These images visualize the invisible - the contrast between frozen air and bodies pushed to their absolute limits.
What Winter Heat does so effectively is remind us that the Winter Olympics are not just about speed, elegance, or precision, but about survival at the margins of comfort. While we marvel at technique and timing, it’s easy to forget the brutal cold biting at exposed skin, the tension in muscles fighting both gravity and temperature. Thermal imaging turns that forgotten reality into the central subject, making the unseen impossible to ignore.
One image that truly stands out is captured by Ryan Pierse, showing a luge athlete training on day minus one of the Games. The athlete’s body burns through the frame in vivid orange, a glowing core of heat hurtling through an environment rendered in deep blues and purples. It’s a striking visual metaphor: human warmth versus an unforgiving winter landscape. The speed is implied, but the struggle is unmistakable.
The technology proves equally powerful on the ice rink. A standout frame by Pauline Ballet captures athletes competing in the Pair Skating – Short Program on day zero of the Games. Here, elegance meets intensity.
The dancers’ heat signatures bloom against the cooler surroundings, transforming graceful movement into a choreography of temperature. It’s less about form and more about effort - about what it takes, physically, to make something so demanding appear effortless.
Taken together, Winter Heat reinforces my belief that Olympic photography is evolving beyond pure action and results. Much like the documentary-style work now shaping how these Games are covered, this series focuses on context, environment, and human experience.
It may not look like photography as we’ve traditionally defined it, but it absolutely feels like the Winter Olympics - cold, extreme, and deeply human beneath the surface.
.jpg?w=600)
