Pennine Lines w/c 17 June 2024

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18 Jun

Written By Dave Parry

|| Warming Up || Looking dry ||

Grace at the Photo Workshop || Big Depot, Leeds

|| Focus On... ||

WOrkshops

I’m sure the full reality of the British limestone summer will hit soon enough - stifling humidity and failing skin - but for the time being the last few weeks of unseasonably cool temps have been a blessing. Not enough of a blessing to actually get my projects done, but still, at least I can fail on stuff in relative comfort. Good times.

With decent conditions on the cards I don’t spend a full day at an indoor wall if it’s not for a VERY good reason, and this Saturday was such a day. In the end the Yorkshire weather did the Big Depot a favour by raining most of the day, so The Big Depot’s Climbing Fair was a busy day from door opening onwards. Good community vibe (and it IS a community…etc) and loads of folk showed up to climb, eat, chat, and take part in some of the workshops on offer.

For the Climbing Photography groups in particular we were blessed with two really engaged workshop groups, representing a wide range of experience levels; from people who’d started climbing in the 1980s to people who’ve started just this year. Outdoor climbing lifers to those just taking their first steps outdoors after learning the ropes indoors. The same goes for the photography side - some participants had been at it for years but just ticking over as snapshooters, some had success in other genres but now looking to bring it to climbing, and others were just learning their craft for the first time.

The gear they brought on the day evidenced a similarly broad range of backgrounds, ranging from no camera at all, to phones, SLRs, mirrorless, wide zooms, primes, big telephotos, and even a mechanical 16mm cine camera. But everyone was united by a few key factors; a passion for climbing, a desire to learn and grow, and being named “Ben”. So a huge thanks goes out to all the Bens for making it a fun day and worth all the effort, and to Grace from the Depot team for being a great sport and throwing some shapes on the wall - I hope everyone got something out for it, even if it was only being reminded about 1990s Atlanta-based chart R’n’B group TLC (you had to be there to get this reference).

Putting It Into Practice || Big Depot, Leeds

I have to say, when I’m planning a set of Climbing Photography workshops for an event like this I’ve not got much influence over - or prior insight into - the workshop participants’ expectations, experience level, equipment and background. As such it’s a bit of a roll of the dice in terms of what you attempt to fit into a crammed-full two hours, including trying to work though practical skills for what is essentially an outdoor genre at an indoor wall. If anything I could have narrowed the remit and covered less, but there you go. Even though it seems like a very niche area, climbing photography is actually quite a broad discipline; part landscape, part sports, part portraiture, and part journalism, if not touching on many more genres too. As such, there’s a LOT you can talk about and work on, and in two hours you barely scratch the surface. My plan is to run some more longer-form climbing photography workshops later in the year. Peak-based and more of a full-day, going a bit deeper into some of the skills and approaches with plenty of outdoor shooting. And probably fit in a few more dad jokes and puns too. I can already hear the weather mobilising against this, but still, we’ll try! It would be great to hear from you if you’re interested in taking your climbing photography to the next stage; if so hit Reply to this email or drop us a message below.

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|| Recently Through the lens ||

The cool-weather honeymoon period of the limestone season might be just about to end, but psyche was high while it lasted. Only the most minging of crimps, the glued pinches, and the most polished footholds this week.