Simon Carter’s top 10 climbing photography tips

1. Find your vision

Do you know precisely why you want to go to all the trouble and effort required to create good climbing photographs in the first place? Do you know exactly what you want to do? And why? And if you kept doing it for say 10 years or more, what would your “body of work” look like, what would it represent, say, or stand for? Asking yourself questions like these might help you find your “vision” for your photography. Finding your “vision” is the most fundamentally important step in improving your photography. Having a strong idea in your “mind’s eye” about the images that you want to create will give you direction. It will help you answer the many questions you might face: where to go and who to photograph, what equipment and techniques to use, and what do you want the final image to look like?

With climbing being such a diverse, multi-disciplined activity, there are some easy ways to photograph it and there are some much harder ways. Having a “vision” may well end up making you work harder but at least you’ll be working “smarter” and finding it more personally rewarding. It may help give you the motivation to persevere when times seem a bit tough. And your vision may change you from being just another photographer who mindlessly follows the latest fads, into being someone with something to say.

2. Be Safe

But being safe won’t help help me take better photos you say? Well yes it will because it’ll you stay alive and that’s kinda a prerequisite for taking any sort of photograph at all, really.

Safety in climbing is obviously an important issue and we need to constantly remind ourselves about it. Bringing photography into the mix means there is simply more to go wrong. A photographer will often find themselves in situations which they don’t always encounter in day to day climbing. Play it safe; there are enough dangers without taking unnecessary risks.

Scrambling unroped around cliff-tops and across ledges, often with loads of equipment, is one of the most dangerous situations for a photographer. Rock fall is another major issue both for photographer and climbers; it’s all too easy to knock rocks off the cliff top or for an abseil rope to brush flakes off the wall, so be careful and don’t endanger yourself or anyone below.

As a photographer you have to be especially considerate of the safety of the climbers you’re shooting. Remember that there may be some climbers who get excited about the idea of being photographed and as a result push the envelope more than they might otherwise. Be very careful about what you might ask or encourage any climber to do. No photo is worth dying for and when it comes to the safety of people you’re photographing you also have a moral responsibility.

3. Improve your climbing skills

Becoming a better climber will help make you safer, more effective and productive in your climbing photography. I’m not really talking so much about becoming a harder climber; I’m talking about skills which will help you move about and work on the cliff environment quickly and safely — things that improve your rope work, rigging skills and increase your understanding of what’s going on. These are not skills that can be simply learnt in a gym but which require spending loads and loads of time on the rock (and/or ice). Do lots of trad and multi-pitch climbing rather than worrying about trying to up your sport climbing grades a notch or two.

4. Climbing equipment

Consider the climbing and outdoors equipment that you use: carry too much and you won’t be able to move, carry too little and you might be missing that essential (cam, jacket, head torch) item just when you need it.

As for ropes, unless I’m climbing a route I much prefer to rig a static rope for my photography; less bounce makes them much nicer to jumar on and far more resistant to cutting. Even then I like to use lots of rope protectors (also re-belaying your rope below sharp sections can be a good trick).

Be sure to set up your ascenders so that your set up is optimised and fast to use. During a shoot you may suddenly need to sprint to a new position higher up the rope so you need move up quickly. Every extra second it takes means missed shots. Hint: although it’s popular, using one gri-gri and one ascender is NOT the fastest technique for ascending a rope.

5. Use a chest harness

Using a chest harness (in addition to your normal waist harness) has the potential to transform your climbing photography! They make working and hanging off an abseil rope for long periods of time far more comfortable (as does a “Bosuns chair” but a chest harness is lighter, much more versatile and faster to work with). But the real benefit is that a chest harness enables you to lean right back (at right angles) from the cliff and hold that position for long periods of time – in relative comfort! So not only can you get a better angle (perspective) on many routes, being comfortable enables you to concentrate on the camera, frame your shots precisely and to be completely ready to capture the peak action. I’m sure they have made a huge difference to my own photography and am surprised not to see more climbing photographer’s using them. Part of the problem is that it is hard to find a model which doesn’t ride up and try to strangle you to death and that’s why I’m still using the same chest harness that I bought over 20 years ago!

6. Photography equipment and techniques

Remember to let your vision, not fads, determine your equipment and techniques that you use.

I’d certainly recommend thoroughly learning the technicalities and techniques of photography — study it if you can. You can also learn a lot from books, magazines and the internet (if used with discipline). Also a large part of learning comes from doing it so get out there and experiment and practice different techniques. Test different settings and work out the limitations of your gear; for example, what shutter speeds and apertures work best with your different lenses?

Technology is changing fast so it’s important to keep learning. Gaining a basic understanding of photography and keeping your vision in mind will help you when it comes to navigating that maze of modern issues such as film vs digital, full-frame vs sub sensors, zooms vs fixed lenses, stills and/or video, off-camera flash and tilt-shift lenses.

7. Understand light

Learn to understand light, no, I mean, REALLY understand it. It is more complicated that thinking the best light is always in the morning or evening and blue sky is best (it often isn’t, it just depends). The time of day, the time of year and the cloud cover are factors which interact to determine the direction, intensity, quality and the colour of the light. Understanding light — and the influence of different cloud covers — will help you make best use of whatever light is there. It will help you anticipate what changes are likely to happen to the light. It will enable you to work out the optimum cloud conditions, the best time of day, and perhaps even the best time of year, for a particular shoot. And it will help you decide if artificial light is needed and, if so, how best to use it.

8. Homework and preparation

Do your homework; many shots will work out better if you know the area, the climb, the conditions and the light beforehand. If possible think ahead about what might be the best angle and position to photograph from. Perhaps abseil down and take some test shots; consider different positions, lenses and compositions.

Get into position early so that when the action is happening you’re in place and ready to catch it. If you prepare early enough you may still have enough time to change position if things look like they’re not going to work out.

And finally, no matter how much planning and hard work you put in, be prepared to scrap your plans be spontaneous and seize an opportunity should it arise.

9. Position, position, position

Position is everything in climbing photography. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be epic — some of my best shots were taken from the ground, a ledge or the cliff top — but it can be epic, it all depends on the shoot. Work the angles, which really just means: consider all options (not just the angle but the distance you are from the climber — and the size they’ll be in the frame).

One of the fundamental challenges in climbing photography is getting a good angle on the action and the climb. Often, if you could somehow get further out from the cliff than by simply abseiling, it would drastically improve the perspective on the climb. But getting further out can present quite a problem. Greg Epperson has his famous stilts as a solution to this. Years ago I built an aluminium A-frame structure, which I called the “photo frame”, which enabled me to get 6m out from the cliff, but it was cumbersome and took hours to set up and then it fixed to one position and wasn’t easily moved — so I didn’t use it much. Over the last few years I’ve devised an apparatus based on a 8m long pole from which the camera hangs down below. There is a video feed from the camera so that I can see the composition on a little monitor and I use a remote trigger to fire the shutter. This is a versatile, adjustable and lightweight solution which I can easily travel with. But not all solutions have to be as elaborate or hi-tech as my “photo pole”. In some situations you can tie the end of your abseil rope to a tree out from the base of the cliff, or string the rope around to another cliff top, to tension out from the cliff that you’re photographing.

10. Composition

There are no hard and fast rules of composition but here are some considerations.

Backgrounds can make – or break – the shot. Use a telephoto lens, and a camera angle, to select a part of the scene for the background and to “clean up” the image; the narrow depth of field makes the subject “pop” out from a nice out-of-focus background of colours, textures and shapes. Or perhaps go wide, wide, wide and show the grand vista and amazing situation that the climber is in.

Keep horizons straight; even a slightly crooked horizon will somehow look “wrong” to the viewer’s eye. Don’t tilt the camera to make the cliff look steeper than it is, quick draws hanging the wrong way will give it away. Remember the “Rule of Thirds”. And here’s a big tip: think about what is unusual or unique about the climb, setting or situation and find ways to emphasise that in your shot, it’ll help your image stand out from the crowd.

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Climbing and photography skills both take time and effort to develop and maintain — it can be hard to find a balance between the demands of the two. The best climbing photographers remain passionate about their personal climbing; they keep up their skills and don’t forget why they love to photograph climbing. And maybe you’ll be high up on a climb and gaze across to a nearby route, see something amazing and think “Wow, I want to climb that, no wait, I want to photograph that!” That’s inspiration and, after all, isn’t that what it’s all about?

Have fun with it! Be safe and good luck!