I have recently got this simple question: “How much time do you spend shooting photos on a mountain climb?”
At first I did not realize it was one of the more interesting questions I’ve got lately. As the word says, if you are on a mountain climb you are a climber first, and then a photographer; as a direct consequence you can only devote time to take photos when you have a brief break moment from your climbing duties, which vary a lot from situation to situation. There’s no quick and easy answer that question but in order to come back with some meaningful photographs the understanding of when and why you can stop to take photos during a climb is way more important than the camera model you’re shooting, at least in “real mountains” scenarios.
Luka Strazar braking trail towards the Eccles bivouacs.
Put aside those situations where the primary goal of the outing is to produce photos - usually commercial photoshoots. In these cases we pick locations relatively close and safe, we have mountain guides in charge of safety, we do location scoutings, there are often mountain huts and lifts nearby. Overall, the environment is “domesticated” and as the people with camera in hand we can focus 100% on our job, which is to take good pictures. We have done researches about location and we already know what to expect; we can take minutes to fine tune our framing or hours to walk to a different vantage point; we can study the sunlight and wait to get the sun in the right place; we can even bring in giant strobes to adjust lighting to our needs. All of this is almost mandatory if you have limited time to produce some preconceived images.
At the complete opposite we have documentary style photography. In the mountains, this happens when we commit on a real climb with the goal of documenting the ascent. In those cases we are participants and observers at the same time, trying to capture the experience as it unfolds and to keep the pace with the rest of the team. Waiting a few minutes to get a shot can translate into one more night on the mountain. There’s no time to waste and no room for errors here. It’s obvious that the photography game is completely different in this kind of scenarios.
I just told we are both climbers and photographers at the same time but this is not completely true: we are first and foremost climbers and in a serious situation we can’t slow down the team just because we need a picture. When situations gets “serious” in the mountains, they can be really serious and there’s no place for mistakes or time to waste. Unfortunately, these are usually the moments that make for the best photographs. Personally, I can’t count the shots I’ve missed when everything was perfect but we couldn’t stop, I was too cold or too tired to take the camera out. But that’s part of the game.
Evening view from the Eccles bivouac.
A perfect example of this concept is a little adventure I had the past January together with Luka Strazar and his wife Petra. They’re extraordinary strong and experienced alpinists (to understand their level is enough to know that Luka won the prestigious Piolet d’Or, the alpinism version of the Oscar Prize, not just once but twice for his groundbreaking ascents in the Himalayas). I was shooting on assignment for a climbing gear manufacturer and together with the company’s marketing department we opted for a story of a real ascent instead of yet another staged climbing photoshoot.
To get good images I wanted something long and big, with at least one night out to provide enough time and opportunities to get the content we needed, and my first choice fell on the Brouillard Integral Ridge on Mont Blanc, the highest peak of the Alps. Luka, which is much more experienced on the mountains than I will ever be, after checking snow conditions in the area decided it was too dangerous for that line and after a brief discussion we all agreed on going for the Innominata Ridge, a slightly more technical but safer line.
When we met in Courmayeur early in the morning of January 13th we found that due to previous days snow the road to Val Veny was closed, adding a few more kilometers to our already long approach towards Eccles huts. During the following three days we covered around 50km with almost 3500m vertical gain, finding our way up the immense South Face of Mont Blanc and reaching his summit at 4848m on January 14th in late afternoon. I had took some shots on the first part of the route, however when we realized we were slow and the clouds were already wrapping the upper section of the ridge, I put my DSLR in my backpack and switched to full climbing mode. At a certain point, around 4600m height, surrounded by fog and whipped by cold wind, the fear of not getting to the summit with daylight started to take place. Even if it was not super cold to be January we were not equipped and acclimated for a night out at that altitude. It was mandatory to reach the summit with daylight. I already was a few steps out of my comfort zone and we pushed to a faster pace. We were now on relatively easy but very exposed terrain, where a mistake would lead to death. At a certain point Luka, Petra and I all stopped for a couple minutes under a stone that was acting as a shield against the wind. As Luka was checking the altitude, saying that summit was somewhere close (we couldn’t see anything at all at that point) I noticed how calm and confident he was and my fear started to fade, leaving room for my photographer-self to wake up again.
I realized there was nothing to shoot there. Not only everything was white around us but we couldn’t stop for longer than a few seconds because of the cold and despite having warm hands the outer surface of my gloves was covered by ice so thick that I could barely grab my ice axe. Pressing a shutter button would have been impossible and no, I wasn't going to take my gloves off with that cold wind.
Luka near the summit.
Petra starting the long descent towards Chamonix. I took this photo without even looking in the camera, shooting blindly while paying attention to where to put my crampons.
We kept following Luka for what felt like one hour (it was probably just a few minutes). And then, boom. As we gained a few more meters to the summit the fog disappeared and the wind suddenly fade to an acceptable level. The sun was setting and we had made it just in time; the way down was much easier and we could easily descend in our headlamp lights. Anyway, we had to move fast. I snapped a few frames and got a snapshot of myself on the summit and we started walking down towards Chamonix.
I will never forget what the sky offered us in the following 10 minutes. Everything around us turned red. Everything. But we couldn't stop, we had to go down fast as the darkness was approaching and we were still in the highest point of Europe, completely alone, on a winter night. I took out my camera and started snapping frames while walking. Being careful not to stumble in my crampons I put the camera at my chest height, trying to focus on Petra and to get a decent framing. When the sunset peaked with its colors I asked Petra to stop a few seconds for a snap. Then I asked again, a couple more times, and the sun was gone. Four hours of descent in the darkness followed before reaching the Tete Rousse hut.
Right after we started descending everting turned into fire…
Well, during the whole three days I shot around 700 frames and around 250 of those where from the bursts I shot blindly while walking down at sunset. It might look a lot but when you compare that number with the around 2000 or more I shoot daily on a commercial assignment they look just a few snaps.
Getting back to the initial question, the time I can devote to shooting photos while on a real, serious mountain climb goes down to a few moments in between the action; anyway, the images I take back are much better and more compelling than anything I could do on a staged scenario, and the reason is that on a real climb my emotional involvement is immensely bigger than in controlled environments. I am sure that if I was dropped on the summit by an helicopter on that same evening just to shoot the sunset and then heli transported down, I would not have shot the same photos I took with camera on my chest while walking down, tired and cold. I guess that’s one of the reasons I love mountain photography so much. Cause you can’t fake it. You must experience it.