Out Of Obsession

There aren’t actually that many people making really visually high end climbing content, especially in the UK. This is a niche that I hope we can really contribute to with Out of Obsession, the film I’ve teamed up with Daniel Turner to create. We’d been toying with the idea of making a short bouldering film for some time and have finally been getting into gear.

Creating films and imagery has been a huge part of my life for the past 6 years. Capturing the visuals of climbing really attracts my focus more than any other form of expression; allowing the natural features of the environment to decide my compositions is a very organic way to craft images.  Playing with the colors of nature. After a week spent on corporate video projects it can be pretty cathartic heading out to the country at the weekend to film something in a beautiful setting.

Setting out to capture the emotion, aesthetics and physical performance of high level climbing at Dan’s limit can be difficult for many reasons. Sometimes it can feel like the planets need to align, conditions need to be perfect, Dan needs to feel strong and motivated, and finally creative vision needs to be on point for anything worthwhile to be made. Conditions are usually the limiting factor, they really decide whether any content for the film can be produced. There’s no glamour; our first shoot weekend involved an overnight stay in my car on the way up. My hotel room had been double booked so I decided to brave the cold of a Hathersage layby. We attempted to film Voyager at Stanage and Bloodsport at Shaftoe, although we were only marginally successful.  Returning from shoots empty handed can be crushing for morale so taking small victories from successes along the path is pretty important. I keep telling myself “if it were easy, we’d be doing something else”.