Photography & filming in the cold
Had a chat with Wannes this morning, mainly about photographic issues.
It always seems to be a problem combining serious climbing with taking decent photographs, left alone filming, especially when you are a party of two. Either you are climbing, either you are belaying the climber. Usualy the only moments one is "free" to take pictures, is while both climbers are at the belay, and of course these are not climbing pictures.
Climbing in a party of three can help, but then you have the drawback of decreased speed, which takes a lot of -longer- climbs out of reach.
But there are more issues on ice climbing photography:
The cold, a conditio sine qua non for iceclimbing, can be a problem with modern camera's, either with a lot of electronics inside, either completely digital. Low temperartures not only reduce battery life drastically, but as we noticed some winters ago with Francis' video camera, can make the whole thing malfunctioning. Keeping the camera warm inside your coat needs to be avoided, as temperature changes often result in condensed lenses and foggy pictures.
Winter lighting conditions are also not as optimal for photography/filming as you would like them. At least in the Alps most frozen waterfalls are out of the sun, like on north facing walls or in narrow gullies. So the contrast is often extremely high between the icefall in shadow and the bright snowy environment reflecting the winter sun. This is the case for both digital and classic photography.
The whole world seems to have switched to digital by now, rendering classic photo film more expensive and hard to find. In this light it is quite remarkable to see the founding of The Black & White Factory, a center for the promotion and conservation of artisanal (film) photography.
A good friend of mine (and also a climber), Geert Vanden Broeck, is involved in this center and so I was invited to the opening a couple of weeks ago. I went to have a look and took my father, who is an amateur photographer for more than forty years and although he switched to digital some time ago, was very interested. We were both very impressed by Jed Freudenthal's photographs, landscapes taken with a large format camera. His photographs show an amazing atmoshere and extreme detail in both the very light and very dark zones. Computers and Internet are too limited to reproduce his images.
It might sound crazy because it is most probably very hard to combine with climbing, but I am thinking about taking an old 6x6 camera to the mountains and expose myself to some B&W landscape photography. I still need a cover for the electricity cupboard at home, and a large photo would be nice for that. No way a digital or even 35mm film capture can provide a high enough resolution for the size I need.
A lot of climbers seem to be interested in photography, or turn into more "serious" photography next to their climbing career. Let me conclude with some friends' websites worth looking at..
- Geert Vanden Broeck
- Werner Van Steen
- Reginald Roels
- Johan -Wannes- Cré
- Werner De Wael
- Kurt Pas
It always seems to be a problem combining serious climbing with taking decent photographs, left alone filming, especially when you are a party of two. Either you are climbing, either you are belaying the climber. Usualy the only moments one is "free" to take pictures, is while both climbers are at the belay, and of course these are not climbing pictures.
Climbing in a party of three can help, but then you have the drawback of decreased speed, which takes a lot of -longer- climbs out of reach.
But there are more issues on ice climbing photography:
The cold, a conditio sine qua non for iceclimbing, can be a problem with modern camera's, either with a lot of electronics inside, either completely digital. Low temperartures not only reduce battery life drastically, but as we noticed some winters ago with Francis' video camera, can make the whole thing malfunctioning. Keeping the camera warm inside your coat needs to be avoided, as temperature changes often result in condensed lenses and foggy pictures.
Winter lighting conditions are also not as optimal for photography/filming as you would like them. At least in the Alps most frozen waterfalls are out of the sun, like on north facing walls or in narrow gullies. So the contrast is often extremely high between the icefall in shadow and the bright snowy environment reflecting the winter sun. This is the case for both digital and classic photography.
The whole world seems to have switched to digital by now, rendering classic photo film more expensive and hard to find. In this light it is quite remarkable to see the founding of The Black & White Factory, a center for the promotion and conservation of artisanal (film) photography.
A good friend of mine (and also a climber), Geert Vanden Broeck, is involved in this center and so I was invited to the opening a couple of weeks ago. I went to have a look and took my father, who is an amateur photographer for more than forty years and although he switched to digital some time ago, was very interested. We were both very impressed by Jed Freudenthal's photographs, landscapes taken with a large format camera. His photographs show an amazing atmoshere and extreme detail in both the very light and very dark zones. Computers and Internet are too limited to reproduce his images.
It might sound crazy because it is most probably very hard to combine with climbing, but I am thinking about taking an old 6x6 camera to the mountains and expose myself to some B&W landscape photography. I still need a cover for the electricity cupboard at home, and a large photo would be nice for that. No way a digital or even 35mm film capture can provide a high enough resolution for the size I need.
A lot of climbers seem to be interested in photography, or turn into more "serious" photography next to their climbing career. Let me conclude with some friends' websites worth looking at..
- Geert Vanden Broeck
- Werner Van Steen
- Reginald Roels
- Johan -Wannes- Cré
- Werner De Wael
- Kurt Pas
Labels: photography, preparation
posted by Nonkel V at
9:58 AM
