It was a true pleasure to photograph the Project Pride Bouldering Festival, the first in Squamish. Michelle LeBlanc put together a spectacular day that encapsulated community, inclusion and most of all… FUN.
35mm Sketchbook #1
The view from my living room reminds me to explore all those mountains I haven't met yet.
So I've started to, with my old Miranda 35mm and my old pal Jackie.
Black Tust has every colour there is...
One foot in front of the other, and I realise these mountains are big, but they aren't so big that you can't get in amongst them. We start talking about more and bigger ventures soon.
Lowe Alpine Aeon Campaign
Great to see our images taking flight for the Lowe Alpine Aeon pack campaign, shot in Squamish BC, with a video and Adventure Journal soon to follow!
Click here to check out the pack and more of our images on Lowe Alpine's site.
Gwen on Psycho Vertical
After getting to know writer and mountaineer Gwen Moffat while making Operation Moffat a couple of years ago, her words have come to mean a lot. And she doesn't mess around. So I'll admit I was a little nervous when she reviewed Psycho Vertical for UKClimbing.com... 'magical' and 'of course it's flawed' stick with me, so does 'an articulate bear' among so many others. Always a treat to read Gwen's beautifully written words.
Click here for her full review.
It's Calling
It's Calling is our third collaboration with the mighty and creative Lowe Alpine, our first two being Operation Moffat and The Bothy Project. In the middle of four months on the road in the US and shortly before getting stuck into shooting the mammoth Yosemite sequences of Psycho Vertical, I got an email asking if I'd get involved in this project and could we start now... erm... tricky timing but YES.
Joe's idea was to shoot in four countries with four filmmakers yet somehow combine all those stories into one. Many pages of notes, mood boards and one hell of a detailed brief later, crews in Australia, Switzerland, Scotland and the USA got to work. It was interesting as footage trickled in from around the world, one filmmaker's style informing and influencing the next in line to shoot.
It was an interesting and challenging edit, using all my forces to weave these adventures together and to write a voice over that would serve as glue. But weaving is what I love most, and we're very proud of this short film which celebrates our want and need to get outside and challenge ourselves, however we choose to do it. Enjoy!
Dirt
Photo by Alex Gorham
I’m a grubby woman in a pizza place. I know I am, but don’t realise the extent of it until I go to the bathroom and look into the mirror.
So. Grubby.
Black fingernails and five day old socks. Scratched legs. Deep brown face - part sun, part dust - hair standing up, up and over and around from that same dust and sun and dryness. I take a little time here to look at myself. From the corners of their eyes other women look too. I want them to look, and to see that I’ve just been somewhere and done something, spent time somewhere they may never get to know. My reflection is my proof. I must look awful, but in that mirror I am beautiful, I am queen.
Later I peel off my clothes before I shower. My ankles are black bands. My legs have gone furry, my hair doesn’t change when I take the kirbies out. I’m reluctant to wash the layers off because they will go, out and off and away. I want the change in me to be visible, to stay there - my full body tattoo. But I wash it all off and it disappears down the drain, my ankles three or four times before the black bands are gone. It’s dirt, after all.
Maybe some of the scratches will turn into scars.
Torridon: The Art of Letting Go
They say it sometimes don’t they, that restrictions can be good. Creatively speaking that is, how it’s good to have parameters or your mind goes wild and there are too many options and you’ll end up making something rubbish.
I agree with this theory, and lately have come to think it applies to your body too. I’ve always been healthy and really without limits as to how fit I could get or what I could aspire to do with myself, and that’s great, it’s a phenomenal way to exist.
But without ever knowing anything else, it goes unappreciated, or at least it did by me. I rarely said to myself – 'hey, you’re fit'. Or, 'that was a hard thing you climbed', or 'you’re quite good, well done'. I was always thinking I could have and should have done better.
This trip to Torridon was my first with a new approach, albeit developed by necessity.
I had a spell of bad luck last year. It began with an ankle injury, which a shoulder injury joined, which a long spell of migraines added to, which culminated in a weird case of appendicitis and a good old stint in hospital, made foggy by morphine and puking. Everything I'd been into for the last decade or so fell off my radar for months and months and months.
This was the first time in my life that I was stopped dead in my tracks, and all functions, even the most basic ones, were taken from me for a while. Which meant I had to get these functions back, one-by-one, slowly, steadily, carefully.
At first the thought of that panicked me. But in all honesty, I didn't miss a lot of the things I thought I would. At times I sort of enjoy the process of putting myself back together. Taking time, taking care. Like being a beginner again, it's hard not to make progress. But at other times of course I get frustrated, impatient, and miss my old strength and energy and confidence in my capabilities.
There is definitely a power in learning to let go. It’s too easy to get so close up to your life that you can’t see what the heck you’re doing, let alone find time to think about it. I was in a cycle – trudging around bogs I didn't really want to trudge, trying to climb rocks I didn’t really care about, churning out work I didn’t always step back from to see what I was making. Suddenly, unable to climb or trudge, unable to work, I had time to think about these things a lot. A lot a lot. It was a sabbatical with pain killers instead of pay, and quite pleasant in many ways. And important, as it turns out.
Step by step. Walking and eating. Being awake for a whole day. Jogging and pilates… re-visiting climbing, remembering how much I like it. These days I am the partner who walks up the hill the rest of the group run, who seconds rather than leads, who reads in the car for an afternoon, who asks for a less ambitious plan for the weekend. I'm proud when I run 5k, I'm satisfied when I climb, well, anything. I go ahead and let myself be happy with those things - it's all progress, it's all progress.
So this trip to Torridon marked some firsts - my first Munro in an age, my first boulder since I let my muscles disappear, our first trip away since we let go a little. It's exciting to return to things I've loved for ages and see them in a different light.
Instagrams in Snow
Al and I have been getting into ski touring, and it makes for some lovely shots. Yes, yes I take my phone up there with me, but I'm also playing with a little old 35mm Olympus and a black and white film, so hopefully I'll have more to share soon. This lot were taken in and around Glenshee and Glencoe on a mixture of rocks, ice and some snow for good measure.
