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Rachel Sarah 💙

a few stills taken from mine and Sam’s first day filming Jim’s documentary. Already, I’m blown away by his willingness to be vulnerable and tell his story on camera. Injury, mental health, and self image are all such hard things for a man to talk about, especially publicly. pic.twitter.com/g7YQFmsK0W

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Rachel Sarah 💙

the first time I met Sam, we went for a chilled climb to see if we vibed and wanted to work together some time in the future. The second, I recruited him as a model for a @ParamoClothing shoot. The third - at the very beginning of co-directing a film together 🎉 #collaboration pic.twitter.com/i1bHkMeEH1

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Rachel Sarah 💙

How I initially felt about getting into the sea. But it turns out my wetsuit actually does the job and filming in the sea is my new favourite thing. 🎥🌊 @JessieLPhoto #filmmaking # pic.twitter.com/5dgmJtCD9M

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Rachel Sarah 💙

current reading 🍃 📖 pic.twitter.com/Yb378muWgu

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Rachel Sarah 💙

today is finishing funding pitches for this absolutely rad film. - our bio photos encapsulate day 1 of filming perfectly: Sam, cold and wet, his hands were so shaky after this! Me, cosy and dry with steady drone flying hands 🌊 🎥 #filmmaking @dryrobe @GulWatersports pic.twitter.com/8Ab3lGCN98

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Rachel Sarah on Instagram

rachelsarahm

Freelance 🎥
She/her | vegan 🌍 | creating films, taking photos, + running around the mountains.

I find it difficult to talk about mental illness,

I find it difficult to talk about mental illness, about body image, about injury and recovery. And I know that there are many people who find it so much harder to talk, to be vulnerable, because of societal pressures and stigma.

On the theme of me being in the water with a camera a lot this year, I am really excited to share my second (and last!) waters film for this year - a documentary focusing on something I often feel is missing from adventure films - men’s mental health.

Talking about suicide, our relationship with our bodies, about trauma - these are all so hard to open up about, let alone to a camera and microphone, so I feel really grateful that @swimjim58 is letting @samwalker.uk and I into his life, his thoughts and feelings, his story.

And here’s to hoping that this film may help -everybody- in feeling more open about sharing and supporting each other ♥️

Oh and also Jim will be doing the small thing of swimming from Jersey to France this summer too... 🏊‍♂️ this is an endurance swimming film with a pretty special place in my heart already.

Our pitch trailer will come soon (currently getting sent to sponsors!) and there’s a sneak peak in my stories.

📸 video and film stills by @samwalker.uk and I

I’m learning to be gentler with myself. Well, I’m trying. I spend almost all of my own time in my own mind and thought after thought after thought are those kinds of thoughts that make me want to curl up into myself and never want to leave. A very fine line between motivating and criticising, a line so fine I crisscross over it all of the time. I understand and accept that this is often what living with depression is but it doesn’t mean that I can’t try and embrace the good so much more.

Hello to trying to be a little more unapologetic, and so much more kinder to myself about my body, my career, my creativity - just all of it. Everything. To celebration of self rather than shrinking because ‘it’s never quite good enough’.

It’s not all just bad, there is so much joy, too.

📸 @jessielphoto capturing me in my element, fresh out of filming in the evening sea with @harvmania and full of creative energy. Edit, me 🌙

“This is what democracy looks like.” Solidar

“This is what democracy looks like.”

Solidarity with everybody heading out this weekend. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen in person so many different causes unite together like this - movements from all facets of social, environmental and animal rights justice speaking truth to power and challenging our government in a way that goes beyond this crime bill. It is just more than this single thing. We are tired of this corruption, the suppression of rights, and this movement toward fascism.

This is what democracy looks like. Spaces like this for normal people to have their voices heard. Please please know and repeat that protests are spaces for everybody, not just for ‘activists’, you belong there. And protests do create change, literal history is my reference for that.

To those able and comfortable to head out this weekend:

- don’t take or post imagery of others without consent
- know your rights (resources in stories)
- know what legal representation you can call if you’re arrested (hopefully your local protest has shared details on who is your legal rep contact)
- go with others if you can
- mask, sanitise, and distance.

It is past time for action. Not just reading and learning and unlearning. Action. Whether that takes the form of protesting or donating or having difficult conversations, in giving space to others, in challenging and turning down opportunities.

- I hope you’re able to stay safe this weekend ♥️

“the thing I find that’s missing from adventur

“the thing I find that’s missing from adventure films and film festivals and things like that is swimming. You see the beauty of swimming, but you don’t see the endurance behind it, you don’t see the grit behind it. And I just want to show people.”

Here starts a 12 month project, with @harvmania training over the next year for her Ice Mile. Exploring the solitude of swimming, and how much she has missed her swimming community - her mentors, and support - throughout the pandemic. How this community will begin to become part of her life again. Exploring and training from now, this spring, into the warmth of summer, autumn, and then into icy waters of winter when she will hopefully be ready to do her Ice Mile. I have to be honest, I had no idea how hard it was.

I grew up by the sea, I used to love the water, when I lived abroad I literally lived on a beach, and used to swim almost daily up until a five or so years ago. And it slipped away from me, and so I’m finally also fulfilling my own goals of getting in the water with the camera, in the oceans, tarns and lochs of the UK.

And, one of the best things, I’m working with @jessielphoto - who is somebody I looked up to when I first decided I wanted to start making outdoor films 🎥 it’s our first project together and I am pretty excited! We will be sharing lots of behind the scenes content and speaking to some really experienced swimmers to learn so many important things 🌞

I keep looking at this photo and imagining that th

I keep looking at this photo and imagining that there’s a big blue body of water in the middle, it feels like there should be, I don’t know - it just feels like empty space. A bit like how I’m feeling right now - I’m just pretty deflated and second-guessing myself. It’s the end of the tax year and 2020 hit me hard with work. Like it has a lot of people, many who don’t have the safety nets I do. It’s been so incredibly demoralising not having work, not having an income, seeing yourself sink into debt as you wonder day after day whether to give up freelancing and take up something else, even if just temporarily or part-time. Being approached and time spent in meetings and planning to then be ghosted or told the budget isn’t actually available. I’m just really tired.

I’m tentative about sharing this, but I feel like that this kind transparency is important especially to anybody who may look at what I do with jealousy or longing. There is so so much joy in this job but fact is that it’s hard to be freelance in normal circumstances and the pandemic has really thrown things into chaos even moreso. I’m really tired and I’d really like to just pack my trad rack and climb a mountain and not worry about this for a day or two.

With conversations centering on solo travel, solo

With conversations centering on solo travel, solo adventuring, I’ve been thinking a lot more on solitude and how it can be often seen. As unsociable, selfish, and as a rejection of others. Solitude has always been a large part of my life, pre-pandemic and now. It used to upset me, my own need for space from others. Space to reflect and create and just, be, without outside influence. And it still does bother me a little now from time to time but mostly because I worry that it upsets others that I can be perceived as distant or uncaring. I am not any of those things, I love and care deeply, but I just enjoy space more than most. I have come to accept that it’s just who I am - I’ve grown into it and the acceptance of it. The last few years I’ve leant so much more into who I am- somebody who loves to be alone, travel alone, create alone, process and heal alone. But also with the knowledge that there’s a place in which I love being with others - the ratio is just a little different to most people’s, and that’s okay. I’ve also noticed that in embracing this love for solitude I now enjoy and value the time I do spend with other people so so much more.

I went fully in with the imagery metaphor here, I truly love this photo and it seemed like an apt time to share it ♥️

[image description: taken from high above, the image is mostly white cloud with a solitary orange piece of land poking out from the cloud in the middle of the frame. If you look closely it looks like a road runs over this piece of land.]

I remember seeing myself as invincible; I could pr

I remember seeing myself as invincible; I could protect myself. I was ‘strong’ and nothing could hurt me.

Mid-teen, I tucked away trauma into a small, unvisited part of my brain - where it still largely lives - and carried on trying to feel invincible. But this sense of self assurance was chipped away, ground away, with each experience of trauma, ‘big’ and ‘small’- and the more stories I heard from other women, and the more I am told that we should behave differently to keep ourselves safe.

So many women are sharing experiences because of what has happened to Sarah Everard - I saw a thread on Twitter today where women shared their experiences on what men could do to help them feel safer when walking at night. And this is a conversation so much larger than that - a conversation where race, sexuality and ability (and so much more) all need talking about. But still, it’s a thread worth reading. I’ll share it in my stories.

When a man crosses the road when he’s walking behind me when I’m alone at night, it makes all the difference - to me anyway.

I’m usually very open as a person, but there are certain traumas I personally do not want to go into publicly. And I’m sure that’s the case for nearly every woman I know. And not just women.

For every person speaking about their experiences, there are so many more who don’t.

I ask this of the men who follow me - have you ever had a conversation with your male friends about this without being prompted? Call out misogynistic behaviour. The jokes, the ‘banter’. Not just when somebody who will disapprove is present.

♥️

When I first found out where our basecamp in the A

When I first found out where our basecamp in the Andes would be, in the shadow of this mountain, I spent some time researching the area, and was determined to shoot the Milky Way and this peak, despite the fact I had (and still have) very little experience in astrophotography. And not *quite* the right lenses to pull it off. Quite often my dreams for a photo are far beyond my actual capabilities.

So fast forward a few weeks and I’m there, with a wonderful group of people I’d been photographing for the past week, feeling such joy and looking up at the sky, seeing the Milky Way the brightest and clearest I’d ever seen it.

But the Milky Way was in completely the wrong side of the valley. Not above the mountain. So, in between cups of rum and dancing by a fire in the cold Andean evening, I wandered off into the darkness alone and set up the camera to capture the stars, and then, after an uncomfortable frozen night’s non-sleep, I crawled out of my tent and captured the mountain as the sun rose. These two photos have been sitting in my Lightroom for over a year now, and in the early hours of the morning this week I was reminded of their existence, and decided to finally create that photo that’s always been in my head. An image I never actually saw but one that represents my time spent in the mountains that night.

It’s really easy for me to stick to the things I am good at, to stay away from trying to create things that may be beyond my skill. So it’s nice to step out of that comfort zone and play with new ways to reflect on and capture moments.

One of my biggest flaws as a creative is moving to

One of my biggest flaws as a creative is moving too quickly. To the next thing, the next idea, a new place - without sitting and reflecting and reviewing on the last. In appreciating what I created and the experience I’ve had. Obsessed with growth, being a better photographer or videographer and concentrating on past flaws rather than those little moments or work I’ve created that might actually be good. Always too hard on myself, comparing myself to those more experienced than me, those less experienced than me. It’s hard not to get caught in looking ahead, especially now.

At the moment I’m feeling incredibly gaslighted by the media, by our government, about our situation here in the UK. I’m thinking ahead but I’m also thinking behind, appreciating experiences and moments that happened in a world altogether different than the world I’m living in now.

Sometimes it’s worth going through the archives. You might find one of your favourite ever photos.

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