Antoine Truchet spent time at the Monte-Carlo Masters 1000 earlier this month shooting one of the most iconic tournaments of the clay-court season from angles most photographers with full professional rigs don't find. 

Every single frame was taken on an iPhone 16.

The clay at Monte-Carlo Country Club is already one of the most photogenic surfaces in sport. That burnt orange against the Mediterranean backdrop, the shadows long in the afternoon light, the red dust that coats everything and gives the whole tournament a particular warmth. Truchet found something else in it entirely. 

A player suspended mid-serve, shadow stretched across the court behind them like a second athlete. Geometry and movement and light doing the work that expensive glass usually gets the credit for.

Antoine Truchet is Charles Leclerc's personal photographer and co-founder of SIDEQUEST. His eye was already well established before this series. 

What the Monte-Carlo work does is make a specific argument: that the constraint isn't the limitation people assume it is. A phone in the right hands, at the right moment, in the right light, produces something that stands alongside anything shot on a professional body. Sometimes it produces something that couldn't have come from one. The access and presence is different. The images feel closer.

There's a wider conversation happening here that the creative industry keeps circling without quite landing on. The tools have changed faster than the thinking around them. Brands still brief photographers with kit lists and commissioners still equate equipment with quality. Truchet's Monte-Carlo series is a quiet argument against all of that. Not because the iPhone 16 is better than a professional camera, but because the photographer behind it is thinking about light and composition and moment rather than gear.

The tennis was worth watching. But I was only here for the photographs.

Shot of the good stuff.