Albarracin - Up Close

For the week leading up to Easter, some climbing friends and I decided to go to Albarracin, in Spain. Our expectations weren’t that high as unfortunately the weather wasn’t looking great, but in the end we got a few decent days climbing in, followed by a total washout of a weekend.

Having previously been on sport climbing trips to Cheddar Gorge, Portland and Mallorca, Albarracin was my first experience of bouldering outdoors. What a place to start! Steeped in history, it really is a magical place, with hundreds if not thousands of ancient sandstone boulders dotted around a huge forest. Easily accessible and with seemingly limitless problems covering all the grades, it’s a bouldering paradise. We were all having a great week until the rain started, and I was particularly happy as I came away having sent the grade I was aiming for, 7a, with a problem called Nisu in the remote and brilliant area of Tierra Media.

Regarding the images, I knew that I wanted to approach shooting this trip a bit differently to the normal style of climbing photography. A lot of my work (I’m a freelance photographer) is based around using details to tell a story, be it a portrait, space, or product, so I decided to apply the same approach to photographing my friends in Albarracin. I focused in on the lines and light that make up holds and limbs, telling the whole story using multiple images.