Finding the Right Location . . .
By John Terence Turner
Stock Asylum Columnist
March 2, 2006
©
2006 John Terence Turner
A picture starts with an idea. Then you put together the elements of the idea. In this case, I visualized an attractive woman rock climber working an overhang. The difficult element was the overhang. I talked to numerous rock climbers about locations and, over two years, visited a half-dozen.
None appealed to me. Many were deep in the forest where the view from inside was usually toward dense trees or other busy backgrounds that would visually interfere with the climber. Such overhangs often had dark lichen and slime-covered rocks that were not photogenic.
 Turner searched for two years before finding this location and shot it twice to get this image. ( © John Terence Turner) |
Finally, a rock-climber who worked as my assistant came through. He told me of an overhang that had not been named because no one had successfully climbed it. His description sounded much better than the locations I had seen. It was more than two hours east of Seattle on the dry side of the Cascades.
As I hiked in I was feeling that this was another wasted trip. Then, suddenly I was there. I walked into the mouth of a shallow cave, turned around and, hallelujah! I had the location! It was a long, clean overhang, looking out onto the desert-like remains of a prehistoric glacial path. On the far side of that flat, dry coulee was a long rock wall similar to the one that housed the cave. No trees! No visual interference! It would work!
There were still problems. It was the mouth of a cave so the overhang was always in the shade. Without lighting, the climber would be a silhouette. Getting the lights in meant lowering them down a very steep, rocky bank and then hauling the equipment to the cave. Not impossible, just not the typical rock-climbing set-up.
For the climber, I selected a young, Indian-born woman named Kanisha, who grew up in Colorado where she began to climb. Now based in Seattle, she works for Microsoft and is getting an MBA at the University of Washington. I never asked her weight, but I’m sure it did not exceed 100 pounds.
Kanisha’s
clothing came from Patagonia, a long-time client. Not surprisingly,
she wore size extra small. Finally, after a quick test in the location,
we set out for a day of fun in the sun.
There were actually two shoots, the first suffered from unexpectedly cloudy weather. However, it confirmed that small speedlights were inadequate so bigger, heavier lights were called for.
A Lumedyne 1600 with two big batteries provided lighting. The1600 was left in its Pelican case so we could tie climbing tubing to it and slide it down the steep, rocky bank leading to the little-used trail to the cave. Additionally, we had a softbox, tripod and cameras and lenses.
The cave was halfway up a cliff that rises from the floor of the coulee to a plateau. From the mouth of the cave downward, there was a steep slope consisting of large, pointy boulders — not something you’d want to fall onto.
Following standard safety procedures for climbers, Kanisha brought someone to belay her. I brought an assistant. We shlepped in all the photographic and climbing gear and began to deploy. A 17-35mm Nikkor would capture the entire width of the overhang. This was August in central Washington so the sun beat down with a lot of light.
A Lee graduated neutral density filter helped balance the difference between sunlight reflected off the coulee surface and the light from the Lumedyne, which was in a soft-box aimed at Kanisha. Another filter warmed the grayish coulee surface and the surface of the overhang.
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Kanisha reached the horizontal portion of the overhang via a vertical wall on the right side of the cave mouth. The Lumedyne was on full power with a recycle time of 4.5 seconds. Kanisha worked herself into a horizontal climbing position, supporting most of her weight with her fingers and toes. She could hold it for two shots, then she’d drop down into her harness, wait a few seconds, then hoist herself back up for two more shots. And so it went.
The mid- to late-afternoon temperature was 95 degrees and she was hanging in the sun like piece of ripening fruit. Or, as she put it, “Hey you guys, how much longer? I’m frying like a piece of bacon up here!”
Because she is quite short, she could not reach many of the handholds from where she started, so all the shooting was done on the right-hand side of the overhang. We worked on different positions, then she came down to change into a different colored Patagonia top and drink some water.
I got what I wanted, a graphically different, human effort shot of rock climbing that required a skill level well beyond that of most climbers.
After Patagonia used it, I turned it over to Getty where it sells pretty well. One problem for some buyers, I think, is that it is too extreme.
(John Terence Turner has been shooting stock photography for 20 years. His work can be seen at Getty Images, Alamy and, of course, The Stock Asylum, where his column appears twice a month. He lives and works in Seattle, WA.)
Turner's web site can be found at: http://www.johnterenceturner.com.
For more of his images: click here.
For all of Turner's columns: click here.
