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June 4th, 2018 - A lot of people who know me associate me with water, or the ocean, or just as the girl who's instagram is stacked with beach pictures. But for the past 6 months, I've developed a new love, a new obsession, something that literally occupies my mind all day. And that's climbing.
To be fair, I haven't really put it out there that I climb that much. It's something that I've kept to myself -- my own skill that I get to work on and craft every evening while I promote my underwater work to the world, and something that most likely no one outside my climbing gym has noticed unless they've paid close attention.
It wasn't until recently that I had the desire to take photos of climbing. For one, I am most comfortable when shooting in the water. Being in the water with a camera has become second nature and throwing myself into a different environment with lighting and angles I'm not used to was scary to me. How could I accurately portray the feeling of climbing a route or boulder problem through a lens?
And secondly, I felt like rock climbing was my baby... I wanted to keep to it myself and not let anyone peek into my world after 7 PM. It was my therapy, my safe space, and I didn't want to share it.
WHICH IS CRAZY!! How could I NOT want to share something so freeing and bring others to feel the fulfillment of participating in such a beautiful sport? So I sucked it up, forced myself to get comfortable with the uncomfortable, and went for it. I hit up my friend Nick, an amazing climber and setter, and 30 minutes later we were at the gym shooting.
Figuring out how to photograph a climber was just like a boulder problem. You stare at the task in front of you and kind of go... How the hell am I going to finish this? You begin on the starting hold. You try something and don't get results so you go, Whoops, well that didn't work. Let me try again. And again. And again. You continue to move your body in different ways until you find that sweet spot. Yes!! That's it! You got it.
Today was challenging and different, but most of all, fun. Today was a reminder that I have so, so, so much to learn, but that experimenting and just going for it, even if it's new territory, is part of the learning process. Now to photograph an outdoor climb... stay tuned ;)