This is not a company page. It is the working record behind ten photographs: where we stood, how long we waited, and what the mountain was doing when it finally let us take the frame.
Khumbu Himalaya · NepalAma Dablam27.8617° N, 86.8611° E- Ranges
- 6
- Summits
- 10
- Seasons
- 4
- Highest
- 6812 m
Pennine Alps · SwitzerlandMatterhornELEVEN
MINUTES
The face turns from grey to copper and back again in the time it takes to boil water. We were ninety minutes early, and still nearly missed it.
Working method, by elevation
- Pennine Alps · Switzerland
Arrive early enough to be bored
The good light lasts eleven minutes and it does not wait for anyone still walking up. We are in position ninety minutes before it, cold, with nothing to do. Boredom at altitude is the price of the frame.
m · 45.9763° N, 7.6586° E - Khumbu Himalaya · Nepal
Carry less than feels sensible
One body, two lenses, no tripod above the last teahouse. Every gram argues with the walk in, and the walk in is what puts you somewhere nobody else photographed that morning.
m · 27.8617° N, 86.8611° E - Southern Alps · New Zealand
Wait for the weather to lose interest
Cloud sits on a peak for four days and then leaves in ninety seconds. The record is mostly a record of patience: sitting in the tussock, watching a ridge that refuses to appear, until it does.
m · 43.5950° S, 170.1418° E - Dolomites · Italy
Come back for the same ridge
No summit here was photographed once. A range only gives up its character over repeat visits, in different seasons, from the shoulder you did not walk the first time.
m · 46.6086° N, 11.6636° E
A mountain is not photogenic. It is simply there, and occasionally the sky agrees with it.
Patagonia · ChileTorres del PaineTHE WIND
DECIDES
Four days pinned in the lee of a moraine, watching the towers refuse to appear. On the fifth morning the whole thing burned copper for six minutes.
Three rules that
have not changed
One range at a time
A range is not a location, it is a season of work. We stay until the ridge has shown us every mood it keeps, then we leave it alone for a year.
No stand-in photographs
Every frame in this record is a peak we stood in front of. Nothing is substituted, nothing is borrowed, and nothing is dropped in because a page needed filling.
The walk in is the work
Anything reachable from a car park has been photographed ten thousand times. The frames worth keeping start about four hours past the last marked trail.
Lofoten Archipelago · NorwayLofotenA SUN
THAT STAYS
Above the Arctic Circle the golden hour lasts most of the night. You stop chasing light and start choosing which hour of it you want.
