I am currently packing for a short trip (a long weekend, really) I am taking to Chamonix, hoping to get a little bit of alpine climbing done before the summer is over (and before going to Nepal in october). The goal is a long route with two or three nights at altitude and at least one a bivy on the route. I thought people might be interested in learning what gear I am taking for such an occasion. The actual climbing rack will depend on which route we decide on once we have assessed the conditions (possibilities include Traversee des Aiguilles de Chamonix, Frendo Spur, South Ridge of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey and a few other routes), but here's about the rest.
There is little doubt that Outside magazine is one of the best and most widely read adventury-outdoorsy-travel magazines out there, so I was very pleased when the editor of their Chinese version contacted me to publish my mountain photography guide. It has been translated into Chinese and will run on 8 pages in their September issue, which should hit the newsstands any day now. If anyone from China is reading this, be sure to get yourself a copy!
It seems everyone has a digital camera these days, and many people even own a fancy DSLR. However, the basic photography knowledge necessary to really master these formidable tools can be difficult to obtain. Sure, there are countless books, websites and forum threads dedicated to this task, but the relevant information is often scattered or incomplete.
I have also been participating to the social website reddit.com for a while now. When someone in the "/r/photography" community asked for an introduction to photography course, I thought it would be a good idea, and I gave it a go. We started last week and I will produce 5 lessons a week, along with relevant assignment. There is no prerequisite, and the target audience is people interested in getting the most out of their camera but who don't have much previous knowledge (though I hope more advanced photographers will also find useful information in there).
You can find all the lessons on /r/photoclass and I will also mirror the lessons on this website. Don't hesitate to take a look and join the course if you think it might be useful!
This was long overdue, but I have finally put up a page with some wallpapers from my most popular images. At the moment, there are five images in three of the most common resolutions (1920x1200, 1680x1050 and 1280x800) but I plan on adding new images regularly, probably once a month.
Don't hesitate to make requests or to share this page with your friends!
It's all over there, in the new resources section: Wallpapers.
Rune Bennike belaying on Millstone quarry, in front of the Hope valley
As you may know, I recently returned from a 6 months stay abroad in London. I moved there in February, just in time to participate in what many have described as the best Scottish Winter in years. As spring rolled and the weather warmed, I kept exploring the trad climbing crags of the country with multiple trips to North Wales, the Peak District, Dorset and other less famous places. According to my logbook, I climbed 68 British routes in those 6 months (though I suspect the actual figure is a bit higher than that).
Some of these routes were mind blowing. Some were amazing, many were good and surprisingly few sucked. Here is, then, my totally subjective list of the 10 best routes in the country. The only rule is that I must have attempted the climb (though not necessarily completed or got a clean ascent).
If you browse photography blogs and website for a while, you are bound to find articles defending that "it's not the camera, it's the photographer", and that equipment doesn't matter, only personal vision does. Of course, they are completely right, and examples abound of good photographers making great art with crappy cameras, as well as rich amateurs spending a lot of money on the latest equipment and producing only mediocre snaps.
Unfortunately, however, this position is sometimes taken to absurd, almost religious extremes. A good example of this is offered whenever a beginner asks for advice on buying his first DSLR. All too often, someone will come and say "The camera doesn't matter, you can take just as good images with a compact for a fraction of the price" or something to that extent. Well, I disagree with that. Sometimes, the camera *does* matter, and I believe that beginners are the ones who will benefit the most from upgrading to a DSLR.
First of all, let me apologize for not having written in quite a while. I have a good excuse, though: I am about to move out of the UK and back to Denmark, after 6 months in the British Isles.
Something absolutely wonderful happened last week. I think it is fair to say that it completely changed my approach to storytelling and doubled (at least) my creative perspectives. In one word, I discovered video.
As a still photographer at heart, I always disregarded video as some lower form of art, and though there are a few climbing videographers I really admire (Renan Ozturk and Cedar Wright among others), it had never really registered that I could create proper films too. My D90 was the first DSLR camera with video capabilities, but it had so many limitations and was so automated that I never used it for more than the occasional snap.
All this changed when I attended the Adventure Film Academy Classic in Kendal last week. Over three packed days, Deirdre Mulcahy from the BBC and Paul Diffley from Hot Aches taught a small group of us how to use cameras and editing software properly, but more importantly how to tell a story.
Though it was nice to finally get a good grasp on the technical side of thing, especially since we used broadcast quality equipment (the Sony Z1, radio mikes, video tripods and Final Cut Pro) which didn't require constant workarounds, the main reason that I came back so enthusiastic was because I had finally understood (or rather begun to understand) the differences with still photography, and how to express not only ideas but also feelings - exactly what I am already doing with photography.
The other part of AFA was even better: we had 48h to direct and edit a short film (2 minutes) on something adventure related. I teamed up with Matt Parkes (from Jagged Globe) and after some discussion, we decided on a quite ambitious and slightly crazy plan: a night walk (it was initially to be a night climb, but talent could not be found in time). We also picked Scafell Pike, the highest peak of England, simply because many people do climb it in the dark as part of the popular 3 peaks challenge.
In the end, we spent 30h without sleeping (including a heroic 4 hours of driving by Matt), 1000m of vertical gain with all sorts of camera equipment, the moon on which we counted a lot was hidden in clouds the whole time and the glorious sunrise we were hoping for (and that the weather forecast had promised) was hidden in a whiteout. Despite these adverse conditions, we still had good fun and managed to bring back some decent footage. Editing it all in just 9h was also quite a challenge, though we received amazing help from all the teachers at AFA, and Mark Melville did a wonderful job of composing music for us.
The final movie won the informal competition held between the three teams who participated in the 48h marathon and will also be shown at the Kendal Mountain Festival (as well as potentially on the BBC). Here it is, in all its HD glory (of course, feedback would be very welcome).
This is just a beginning. I have just bought a HD camera (the Panasonic GH1) and am looking forward to making short films about so many different things... Stay tuned!
Since the launch of this blog a couple of weeks ago, I have received several complaints about readability and typography. I have made a few changes in hope of improving things, and I think the articles and comments read better now, but please do let me know if you still have any problems, or if you believe things could be better.
You might also have noticed a few changes on the website: the news section disappeared, since it is more or less covered by the blog in a more personal way, the cover image changed again, and the Prints page was moved to the top level since it seemed many people didn't find it. Here too, suggestions are very welcome!
Have you ever taken a walk with your camera, in a foreign city or a nice patch of woods, intent on finding some good images, but nothing looks really that greats and you can't seem to get the creative juice flowing. After a while, you just shut off, put the lens cap on and gloomily head back home. Yeah, I thought so.
It used to happen to me with alarming frequency, and it sometime made me feel like the only way I could obtain half-decent photographs was to stand next to a landscape so jaw-droppingly beautiful that pointing my camera in the general direction of the scene would be all that was really required (thankfully, mountains often provide such landscapes).
But it doesn't have to be, of course. Many, if not most great photographs have been created when the photographer's unique vision transformed what might have looked like an average scene into a beautiful and moving work of art.
The question is how to get into this wonderful creative mood that challenges and pushes you to create great images even in uninspiring places? Fortunately, there is one tool which I have found very useful in the past: shutter warm up.
As you may know, I have been spending the last few months in London (well, most of the weekdays, at least), but my stay in Britain has almost reached its end, and I will be moving back to Copenhagen at the end of the month. I also spent last weekend exhibiting at Cliffhanger and sold some prints. However, I have quite a few left, and since it would be a pain to bring them back to Denmark, I am trying to sell them quickly. So, behold the following great offers, on which I am (sadly) making almost no profit.
I have four different posters of A2 size (42x59cm or 16x23in), on 200gsm matte paper:
They are for sale at 10£ (12€/15$) each, or 35£ for all four. This does not include shipping cost (or I would be making a loss!) but it won't be more than a couple of pounds to send it anywhere reasonable. I can sign the prints if you desire.
I also have the gorgeous A2 canvas print of Chopicalqui which was exhibited in several festivals, and which could be yours for 90£ (again, without postage).
This offer will expire at the end of the month, or when my stocks run out, so please hurry! Just leave a comment or send me an email if you are interested.
Update: The canvas print is now sold. I still have some posters left.
Well, I was certain to get your full attention with this title, wasn't I! We are always looking for the magic bullet that will suddenly turn us into the lovechild of Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson and, when we find things to be a bit more complicated, we turn to our secret weapon: our wallet. Surely with the latest 2.8 zoom, or if we switch to a full frame camera, then our images will get better. Right?
Well, things don't quite work this way, and deep down, we all know the truth: there is no magic bullet. We can't buy our way into being a good photographer any more than we can buy our way into becoming a good writer. Talent might give you a head start, but in the end, the only way to become any good at creating images is, like for everything else, to practice it a lot. Nothing can replace hard work and shooting tens of thousands of frames, day in and day out. As brilliant as HCB, Adams, Weston and any of your photographic heroes might have been, they have worked very hard to become as good as they were, and they shot a lot of crap to get there, just as everybody else.
At this point, you might simply shrug, thinking that there is nothing new here and you would be right to find the title of this post misleading. Indeed, just accepting the reality and saying "I need to work hard" is great, but it isn't of very concrete help.
But I didn't lie: there is a thing, simple and relatively easy, that you can start doing right now and that is guaranteed to make you a much better photographer than any amount of money you could spend on gear or even workshops. I was lucky enough to discover it by chance when I started getting serious about photography, and I have no doubt that it was the main factor in making me reach where I am today (wherever that is).
The question of how to manipulate and store all the data acquired in a shoot is an extremely important one. There is a large number of steps involved in downloading, cataloging, processing and backing up the images, most of them rather repetitive. It really pays off to be disciplined and careful about the whole process, as you will ultimately gain time, will be able more easily to retrieve the good images from any session and will ensure that no image can be irretrievably lost.
Workflows are very personal and I doubt two photographers use the exact same process. They are also constantly evolving, as software or hardware gets upgraded and as new ideas are discovered, tested and eventually discarded or retained. So for some inspiration, here is my personal workflow, from start to finish, in the middle of 2010
You might remember that last December, I announced I had gotten a publishing contract with Rocky Nook for a book on hiking and climbing photography. Well, I haven't been idle since then, but I realized I haven't talked much about it.
There is one message I keep repeating more than any other when asked how to create good photography: the most important thing is to always have a camera ready, no matter how inconvenient it may be to stop and take a picture, as you can never know when the next great photo opportunity will appear. But rather than just repeat this somewhat abstract piece of advice, let me give you a concrete example with my last trip.
This will be a short entry, but it would be a shame to have this shiny new blog start completely empty... Anyway, I have been working behind the scenes for the past couple of days to bring you something I have been wanting to create for a while now: a blog! You might object that it would have taken me a couple of seconds to create one on blogspot or wordpress (and you would be completely right), but I was aiming for a nice design and complete integration with the rest of the site, which necessitated some advanced dotclear wizardry. Obviously, some problems are going to remain, so please do let me know if you find anything out of place, broken or even simply badly designed. This might be a perfect opportunity to try the beautiful new comment system :)
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