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?

While I was away in Scotland on my “in at the deep end” open canoe trip, I rediscovered what it was about those northern views that does it for me! Enjoy!

Robs sickness and the foul weather finally passed over but there hadn’t really been enough rain to pump up the rivers. However it was a stunningly beautiful afternoon to finally get going.

Leaving Loch Ba, the very low River Ba made for very slow progress and we didn’t actually seem to be getting very far from the Blackmount.

Our first campsite was at the eastern end of Loch Laidon following an exciting sail under a full tarp. Beautiful location with a god awful sleeping surface. The morning mist and calm more than made up for the discomfort.

Slowly the mist evaporated to give the perfect Scottish view.

Even though the Gaur was a bigger river it was suffering just as badly from the dry weather and so more pushing, pulling, lining and cursing were the order of the day.

Slowly we crept and scraped closer to Loch Rannoch.

After what seemed an age we emerged from the body wrecking drag down the Gaur and lined the last steep falls towards open water.

On Loch Tummel we had to Battle a Mean Headwind which did test my newly learned open boat paddling technique to the limit.

Arriving at the dam it was hard to work out where to portage from, especially as we were too lazy to get the guide book out.

It took a good hour to portage the Tummel dam with just two of us and two heavily laden boats.

At least we found a decent “beer shop” when we were finally forced to give up about 40km from our intended destination. Good trip and fantastic Northern Views. When the bruises heal, I fancy another go at a similar trip.