Love this picture from Canon Ambassador Brent Stirton.  It’s from the Omo Valley, Ethiopia.  Use of flash lights to bring out the foreground works really well here but I  find the use of flash jars sometimes on his other pictures because the light is a different colour / temperature to the ambient light.  I wonder if he couldn’t use coloured filters on his flash guns?  See what you think >> http://www.brentstirton.com/

These pictures were taken a while back and posted on the High-8.  My pal Somhairle half pulled me up about the shoddy editing and he’s absolutely right.  Done in a rush before heading off and on my laptop monitor (which doesn’t cut it), definitely a bit of complacency creeping in, not just on these but on a few recently.   Anyway, that’s what good pals are for no? – telling you when you making a mess of it!  No one else will.

I’ve decided to post them here the same way anyway for interests sake.   Because of the wet nature of the gorge and trying to keep the camera dry, the lens was steaming up, which you can probably see from the slight haziness in the pictures.  The tendency then is to crank the sharpening and definition settings when editing.  It’s always a danger when learning something – the more you know about it the more you realise the mistakes you are making!  I’m sure there are plenty more to come.  Anyway, it’s good fun learning, especially when it takes you to places like this!   The Devils Cauldron:

I have been waiting a while to climb V,5 ice in Scotland.  Fortunately Ewan was there to drag me up it.  Here’s some pics:

A very crazy video shot about wing suite base jumpers.  This must surely be closest people have come to flying.

Saturday was an exciting day out on Ben Nevis ending with the rescue of two stranded climbers.  Here’s the helicopter hovering over the stranded climbers in the Gully (if you look closely you’ll see their torches).  Ewan my climbing partner is also up there somewhere helping them out of their sticky predicament!

This last weekend we opened up a project on one of Scotland’s remote bothies.   As a regular visitor to bothies, it’s always on the back of my mind how a contribution can be made to keep the bothy culture alive and functioning for the future.

This particular building, perched spectacularly on the edge of a loch in one of Scotland’s most fantastic landscapes, has been in need of face-lift for some time having been abused by a very small number of the travellers passing through –  a handful of people who decided to leave rubbish rather than carry it out.  So a small team of us set out to tidy the space for anyone that might want to stay.  The plot thickened however – as we tidied an [almost] blank canvas appeared where the rubbish had been.

In case you feel you might have anything to contribute to a creative outpost in Scotland’s Bothy Culture get in touch through High-8.

Climbing Everest, once considered impossible, is becoming an altogether mediocre achievement.  I have a book, published in 1983 called ‘Everest: The Ultimate challenge’.  Now on an in-season day people cue next the summit for their ten minutes on top.  In just one single weekend last year, over 300 people summited.

Times have changed on the world’s highest mountain.  People going to the top are no longer time-served mountaineers.  Instead they are cleints on commercial trips – anyone with a spare $25,000 to buy a place on a tour to the ‘top of the world’.

Mountaineers have moved on to other more difficult but much less recognised challenges – doing more technical routes with less equipment in fast time – known as Super-Alpinism.    Back in the 70 and 80s, when the achievements in mountaineering were much more tangible – ‘the first to summit Everest’, ‘the first to climb K2′, ‘the first to climb all 14 peaks over 8,000m’, ‘the first woman to climb x’, ‘the first Briton to climb y’ etc, etc – it was much easier to get the world’s attention.  Now the races are over, or at least much less talked about, and for those pushing new routes it’s about the mountaineering rather than being the first.

But back on Everest the egos keep going.  People go to say ‘I got to the top of the world’.  If it was about mountaineering, then those people would be mountaineers – ones that had spent years learning the skill and climbing the mountains.

I’ve always watched Everest with interest – [perhaps foolishly!] I thought one day I might climb it.  Now I realise, the more people go, the more  Everest will fade into the ordinary, it’s magic melting along with it’s Glaciers.  It’s time for Westerners to find something else to do and learn to respect a mountain, just as the Nepalese and Tibetans always did before we arrived.

Written in response to the film ‘The Wildest Dream’ – in cinemas just now but not worth going to see.

So where are the mountaineers hanging out??

Cerro Torre, Argentina: photograph taken by a friend of mine Douglas Cunningham at Leading lines Photography.

See more extreme mountains

It’s been a while since a saw an Adder in Scotland.  Just like the last time, I nearly cycled over it.

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