First, I must make it very clear, I am not a fully trained, fully paid up professional photographer. My passion for images came about through discovering climbing … a few years … ago! Trekking round the hills of North Wales with my Kodak Instamatic in hand, taking and wasting countless rolls of film on blurry memories of those days when you start to map out the future direction of your life.
What started out as a habit, 30 odd years ago, has become a bit of an obsession now – much to the irritation of many climbing and canoeing partners. From the habit grew a not too strong fascination with the workings and technicalities of photography and I slowly began to accumulate gear and a smattering of techniques that allowed me to capture some truly stunning scenes from angles that most photographers never ever dare tread. Some of my most memorable days have been spent, emerging from atrocious weather into a breath taking sunset, or the never dull walk down from the summit of Ben Nevis after another day tackling one of the classic ice climbs on its North Face.
Just to give you a flavour of how the photos for CosmicRay Images and the Atmospheres Headers are collected here’s a slightly irreverent video of our recent ascent of a long awaited classic on Creag Meagaidh in Scotland. South Post Direct, one of the classic climbs in the coffee table collector’s book “Cold Climbs”. This winter has been one of the most memorable in the UK for a very long time indeed
Image Gathering for CosmicRayImages
I’ve only had to wait 20 years to get on this particular beauty, after injury, work, marriage, children and all the other necessities of life kept me (quite happily) away for years. Even in my unfit state, I was still able to lead the top pitch of steep ice, so that was a double bonus. The ice warriors featured here are the cream of the UK’s current crop of middle aged, not-fade-away, arthritic has beens 
… so if we can do it, what’s stopping you?
Tuesday, 23. February 2010
Superb video Ray, it looks incredibly steep! Hope you got some class pictures to use; I’m sure your subscribers would love to be able to use some of your winter climbing images for their own websites!
Thursday, 25. February 2010
Hi Joe, thanks for the comment. I was out collecting some more footage on Tuesday last, it all went a bit horribly wrong. Our attempt to climb a buttressy sort of route on Gt End to avoid the obvious avalanche threat didn’t go according to plan. We had to escape into one of the runnels of SE Gully and were blitzed by heavy powder slides. Funnily enough, the camera didn’t come out at all after the climbing started!!
I discovered the margin of misjudgement was even narrower than I had thought when I still managed to set off a medium sized slab avalanche despite creeping through the rocky islands at the edge of an obviously dangerous slope.
As I flailed with my axes to keep my weight forward and break the slabs coming at me all I could think was. “The kids will never forgive me!” It was a bit closer than I like. Especially as Rob was tied onto just 3 poorly sunk screws in the only bit of ice at the bottom of the slope. When I looked down and didn’t see him I thought the slide had swept him off and I just hunched waiting for the jerk on the rope … which thankfully never came; he was just hunkered down to avoid the full force of the slide. I haven’t been that close to a “nasty” in all the winter trips I’ve had out. Fortunately we were able to emerge relatively unscathed onto the summit of Gt End for the obligatory sand blasting in a fierce easterly gale carrying several thousands of tons of snow as far as the eye could see. Should have stayed low!