It feels nice to be back to the relative quiet of home now. The peacefulness of being sat at my desk with a morning coffee from my own coffee machine, ready to resume edits on the film projects that have been waiting for me at home whilst I’ve been working away.
CategoryPhotography
A frozen, wintery van roadtrip around Iceland
Finding ourselves the only people at our campsites, taking turns to take the driving and somehow it’s so far always me in the dark on the snowier roads. Making sandwiches in our little rental camper and really realising how much we love our giant van back home.
Photojournal: a dream assignment in Argentina
But that’s just the nature of this job, it isn’t always going to be the perfect conditions, and there was a real beauty to the harshness of the mountains that day. Knowing they could have been even more challenging and dangerous had the wind increased, thinking back to the fierce winds of our day on the glacier and what it would been like up here.
blue skies and snow blankets
The sky is becoming a little less blue, minute by minute, as the vibe from bluebird day begins to change. As we head down the clouds begin to roll in, whipping up the snow around us and pushing us sideways as we head back down to the car park, the view of Loch Morlich still visible through dancing powder. I’m thinking about food, and a shower, and how much fun I’ve had.
finding winter
We solo on the gentler start, comfortable on the terrain but then the rope comes off the bag, time to pitch. This will be our most technical gully, we’ve done some II climb on ridgey-clambery terrain but not in a gully, so I’m quite interested to see what the gear-situation is.
finally, ice before the ice mile
It’s been quite a while since I’ve genuinely felt so immersed in something. Even when shooting other things, I’m worrying about other things and I find it pretty hard to switch off these days, though going into the New Year I’ve really been working on it. But I really did find myself totally in the moment here. Feeling the cold and concentrating on the shots.
bothy nights
Michael falls asleep at about half past seven. I doze and wake and doze and wake. I’m pretty sure I heard a ghost at one point but it was probably the wind. I wonder whether I’d feel comfortable staying in a bothy alone. I’m unsure. I’ll stay in the van alone, I’ll camp alone, I’ll bivvy alone. But part of me wonders whether staying in a bothy alone would be too much for me. Ghosts or no ghosts.
unpublished writings of winter
Every time I think I’ve settled into some kind of acceptance about being at home, about missing the winter season, the hills, (the suffering!), the specific kind of creativity that comes with looking through a viewfinder at a wild landscape, I’m then thrown back out of that acceptance.
for the love of it
We headed down, taking our time, picking out the details of the rime on the rock, how the ice formations were shaped like leaves, carved by the winds of yesterday. I played around with shooting on a 55mm, the only lens I’d brought up with me.
just getting in
It’s not the actual getting into the water that is hard, that I can do. But, it’s just getting to the water’s side in the first place. Picking myself up, leaving the safe place and making the journey there.