Despite what England may look like at the moment, summer has almost arrived, which for me will mean serious alpine climbing (and of course, photography).

To celebrate, I am offering a 50% discount on all prints ordered from this website before July 15th! All the details are on the Fine Art Prints page, and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, of course.

In other news, there are three new images from last weekend climbing trip in the Peak district, now in the rock climbing gallery, my image "Climbing Frog" won the first prize in the photocompetition organized by Reportages Photo on "Ecology", and all three of my entries were awarded bronze awards in the Epson international panorama awards.

It was time for some spring cleaning in the galleries... They have now been reorganised to show a clearer focus in image mountains, with Climbers split in Mountaineering and Rock Climbing, while Urban and People get merged into a single Other category. A new gallery for less extreme endeavours, Hiking, also makes an appearance.

This also means lots of new images (and some old ones gone, of course), so go check the new galleries out!

I am very pleased to announce that I have been invited to speak at the "Because It's There" Mountain Festival which will be held at the Royal Geographic Society of London on June 15th. The short film Why do we climb will be shown and I will also give a very short (8 minutes!) slideshow on mountain photography. The other speakers include such legends as Stephen Venables or Doug Scott, so this is a huge honour to me! Tickets are currently being sold, so if you are planning to attend, let me know.

So far, spring had been kind to me: a long sport climbing trip to the south of France, and new destinations pretty much every weekend, be it the Peak District, Wye valley or Glencoe. My latest project was to try and solo the famous Cuillin ridge, on the Isle of Skye, an ambitious but achievable goal, assuming weather was on my side.

I got the forecast I was hoping for on Friday and made a quick dash for Skye, arriving in Glenbrittle 24h later, then setting off at the rather early time of 2am. Despite strong winds and a few short rain showers, weather was very good, and I was even faster than I had hoped. After a few hours, as I left some of the hardest bits behind me, I started to believe I could actually make it. Until bad luck stroke: on a section of easy ground, I badly rolled my ankle, hearing a distinct cracking sound. I managed to descend on loose scree slopes and then make my way back to London, but the swelling (and past experience) leaves little doubt that this is at least a serious sprain, or possibly even a small fracture.

Nothing Earth shattering, but it will probably mean I have to take it easy with my climbing in the weeks to come. Probably a good opportunity to spend some more time working on the book (which is progressing nicely, by the way) and work on some of my secret long term projects :)

As the winter climbing season finally reaches its end (for me, at least), I have updated the galleries with no less than 7 new images, from Chamonix, London, Peru, the Peak District and Wales. As usual, check them out in this dedicated gallery. Quite a few other pages have had small modifications, the most significant of which probably is on the front page, as the cover shot, previously of the northwest ridge of Chopicalqui, is now from our descent of the same mountain.

I am writing this from the Showroom cinema in Sheffield, where ShAFF (Sheffield Adventure Film Festival) 2010 is taking place. Yesterday, I participated in the first edition of the Arc'Teryx Adventure Shot competition, where five photographers presented a 4 minutes slideshow of their work, judged by the likes of Ian Parnell and David Simmonite, and I am very glad to report that mine was awarded the first prize! Here is a link to the video: Why do we climb.

In another event, Llanberis Mountain Film Festival, my photo Chopicalqui won the second prize in the Mountains category.

My daily photoblog, Aperture First, just had its 1000th image posted! To celebrate, I picked one image from each month the blog has existed, and put them up in a special gallery:

A Thousand Images Retrospective

I also posted a new Trip Report a few days ago, about my climb of Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis, in Scotland. If you haven't already read it, take a look at Scottish Towers.

Much has been happening in my life lately, the biggest event being that I have (temporarily) moved to London a few days ago, for my PhD. This means that a lot of climbing is now accessible for weekend trips, and I spent last weekend winter climbing in beautiful Scotland, up Ben Nevis and Buachaille Etive Mor.

Two of the photos from this trip and one from Norway have been added to the galleries, go check them out. The first one was taken with the neat little Olympus Pen E-P1 which I've been lent for a few months, to test in the mountains. So far, I really like it, and I will write a more complete review once I am more familiar with the camera.

Two series of images from the Cordillera Blanca have been shortlisted for the Travel Photographer of the Year 2009 award, and in the final ranking, they placed #8 in the category "Natural Wonders" and #19 in "New Talent".

The article "A plea for HDR" has now been translated in Spanish on the website fotoforofos (say it ten times without stopping). Pretty cool to get the word out!

Abstract is usually not my forte, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the website "The Photo Argus" included my photo of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, Cross in their list of 40 Astounding Examples of Abstract Photography.

I have just come back from an amazing week of ice climbing in Norway, lots of snow, lots of ice, very very cold (three days below -14°C, with a minimum at -21°C...), but mostly lots of fun! Look out for some new images in the next few days.

I gave a small interview to German photographer Olaf Bathke before leaving, and it is now published on his site. You can read it over there.

Oh, and happy new year!

My article on realistic looking High Dynamic Range photography, A plea for HDR was published on The Luminous Landscape.

On December 16th was Reclaim Power, a non-violent demonstration which aimed to host a people's assembly just outside the official summit, for people's voices to be heard. Danish police, unprovoked, reacted very violently, with teargas, pepper spray and baton attacks. A quarter of the demonstration (250 out of roughly 1000) was also arrested, but the assembly took place, if not where initially planned.

I was with the blue block (the main body of the demonstration) until they got completely surrounded by police, around 13h00. I managed to climb a lightpost and to get pictures of police violence against the demonstrators. The full gallery is accessible over there.

Along with Luminous Landscape, one photo website that I follow daily and greatly admire is Mike Johnston's blog, The Online Photographer. So it was a great surprise this morning to find that, in the context of asking his readers which was their favourite photographers, Mike had featured my work, after it had been nominated by Dave Sailer. The whole story is over there.

There is no link from the main website, but a new gallery has been added yesterday. I took part in the biggest demonstration ever in Denmark last Saturday, gathering some 100.000 people in the street to protest against climate change and political inaction.

A few days ago, I contacted publishing house Rocky Nook, proposing to write an entire book expanding my Guide to digital mountain climbing photography, and they have accepted! I have already started work on it and publication is planned for early 2011.

This is a great new development for me, and judging by the other books in Rocky Nook's collection, the finished book has the potential to be really beautiful! Stay tuned for more details...

As you probably noticed, alexandrebuisse.org has been completely redesigned! I am still ironing out the last details, and it also takes some time to reimport all the old content, but if you notice something weird or just have comments about the new website, I'd love to hear from you.

I have finished a photo book of my recent adventures in South America, just in time for SoFoBoMo and will soon make it available for sale on blurb.

Edit: more details and links to blurb and the whole pdf on the books page.

The image Unveiling has been selected for the Best of Nature exhibition in the San Diego Natural History Museum, between June 27th and September 13th.