Industrial action

As an outdoor photographer I have some skills that allow me to work in adventure sports and outdoor activities with a degree of comfort. One of the skillsets that I worked to aquire is my "Working at height, rigging and rescue' ticket. The experience enables me to undertake work on industrial sites which is a very different theatre of operation to the crag, believe me!

Accidental heroes

This weeks' post has a serious tone because it deals with a climbling accident - with all the "what if's," "could have's" and "should have's" that are an inevitable consequence of such a thing.
But I'm not dwelling on those. Instead, my thoughts are about the humanity, compassion, shared responsibility and comradeship shown between climbers (and other outdoor users) when the shit hits the fan.

Tough at the TOB

The Tour of Britain came through my local town of Kendal, up here on the edge of the Lake District, just a few weeks ago. I knew it was coming of course. Cycling has been "flavour of the month" in the wake of the Olympics.
I don't get much opportunity to shoot road racing, which is a pity because I love watching it on telly. Shooting it live is challenging and quite a buzz. These guys don't hang about and you have to be right on your game to catch the moments and create something worthwhile.

Light the bike

In this months post I'm going to look at a shot I created as part of a workshop day on mountain bike photography.
What I tried to do here was build a lighting set-up that would be easy to re-create in any forest/woodland situation.
By testing out a basic set-up and taking note of the settings I hoped to give my students a reasonable starting point to work with.
Ok, so let's deconstruct it.

A new hang out

Note to self; Don't start this post with the word "So"...

You won't believe this but the climber in this photo, hanging from from the roof by ice axes is called Paddy Cave! Honestly.

Anyway, Paddy was  telling me about this whole new thing in climbing -  "sport mixed" or "dry tooling". The idea came about as a progression from climbing hard mixed winter routes which rely on climbing sections of steep rock between bands of ice - using the ice tools - and climbers training off-season for winter routes on artificial climbing walls with ice tools. Supposing you used disused quarries instead of climbing walls, and manufactured some really hard routes by drilling or chipping some axe placements, bolting the wall for the placement of protection ( what climbers call running belays or just "runners") and seeing just how extreme you can get with dry tooling? Et Voila! This is the result.

Making light work of night rides

So, here's a second installment on shooting LED torches at night with some live action - in this case mountain biking. These photos were created to illustrate the power and useability of the clients new outdoor LED lighting products so we wanted to produce some photos that showed them in realistic, real-life situations, that would be eye-catching and have some impact.

Run for yer life!

So, here we have a tricky shoot that tested everyone's resolve, patience and problem solving ability almost to the limit.
My client asked for an image that would showcase the amazing beam penetration power and brightness of their new high-tech LED headtorch design. The image would need to relate to the outdoor trail running market and would be used for brochures, web-site, point-of-sale and an exhibition stand at shows. And it had to be shot by the end of June to go to press. When we had our initial conversation in May that looked like an easy deadline. But that didn't account for the inevitable production, supply and delivery problems that prototypes always seem to attract. So my protype sample didn't land 'till mid June, just in time for the British monsoon that we like to call summer these days - gulp!