NEW PHOTOS & FOLIO · 11 May 2008
Just added approx 150 photos to the gallery.
Also created a folio of some of my favourite images. Check that out here.
— Simon Carter
Back from Babylon · 8 May 2008
Just home from a quick 12-day trip to New Zealand. Monique and I spent most of the time down in Fiordland (SW of the South Island), in the Darran Mountains/Milford Sound area. Call it a belated honeymoon if you like, but of course we were there to climb (and photograph). We weren’t planning to get on the longer, higher, alpine routes there this trip, it was too late in the season. We really wanted to check out some of the new sport climbing crags we’d be hearing so much about: The Chasm, Babylon and Little Babylon.
It was cold and wet some of the time, along with a pretty heavy dusting of snow, so we were happy to do all our climbing at Little Babylon, the newest crag, which is so steep it was completely unaffected by rain. We found the climbing on the featured fine-grained rock to be superb and the magical forest made it a great place to hang out. It’s a pretty hard crag though, the easiest routes are grade 23 or 24.
The pic above is of Bruce Dowrick on Jesus Built My Hotrod (27/28). Among other things I also got some shots of Derek Thatcher on his amazing looking 33 there, he is definitely climbing in top form. There was a great crew of Kiwi’s hanging out there with us; it is so good to see such a genuinely positive vibe. It would have been great to have had time to also climb (and photograph) on Babylon, a beautiful looking wall with routes up to three pitches long. You pass this wall half way up the steep 30 minute hike up to Little Babylon. But actually, I’m glad to have a lot more to go back for.
— Simon Carter
Recent published work · 29 April 2008
Here are some “tear sheets” of some of my photos that have been published in print in the last few weeks. I’ll try to show some examples of where my work is used from time to time but keep in mind these are just some examples, there also will also be a lot of other images being used that I probably won’t get around to showing here. I don’t have the time or inclination to scan it all in and I don’t feel the need to show it all.
Alpha Magazine (Australia) used my shot of Nathan Hoette (on his Sparticus, grade 33, in the Grampians) in their April issue for their “Man Alive” section. Nathan backed it up by giving readers a bit of schooling in the finer points of rock climbing in his typically entertaining style.
Men’s Health in the USA used my shot of Steve McClure clipping on Mecca (8b+, at Raven Tor, UK) to illustrate a training article. When it comes to muscle definition it’d be hard to beat Steve’s guns. The article and photo has already since been reprinted in Men’s Health Australia and Mens Health South Africa.
The German climbing magazine Klettern was the first publication to use one of my photos from my new years trip to Tasmania. The photo is of Steve Moon on the ultra classic Pole Dancer (22) which is located right out at the end of Cape Raoul, at the southern tip of the Tasman Peninsular. Getting this shot took a few days of hard work but it’s a place I’d always wanted to visit and it was well worth it. It’s about three hours hike to the start of the Cape proper, so we camped there the first night like most parties do. From there it’s several hours of abseiling, scrambling, climbing, scrambling, abseiling, climbing, etc, just to get to the start of Pole Dancer. You feel pretty committed and out there near the end of the Cape, as if you’re on a big wall or a mountain ridge. A totally awesome place though and a great experience.
Two Australian magazines ran spreads of my Totem Pole slack-lining shots in their April issues. Inside Sport’s treatment (above) was clean and classy and Ralph Magazine (below) took a funkier and funny approach, as might be expected (ie. “not a good time to get itchy balls”).
Double-page spreads of my Totem Pole slack-lining photos have also since been published in CRUX Magazine (as a pull-out poster) and in Men’s Health South Africa.
My hat goes off to the two guys who walked the slack-line: Hans Hornberger (German) and Ryan Gormley (Australian). I really appreciated the mental control it took to pull this off when I clipped into the Tyrolean Traverse and slid over the void a little while later; it’s a place that really bombards your senses. I was back down at the Totem Pole for the first time in five years because some friends wanted to climb it and I wanted to get some photos for a promotion of Nikon’s Nikkor lenses. I was also trialling Nikon’s new D3, their first full-frame digital camera, and I must say I was mightily impressed (which is really saying something given I’m a film loving die-hard). More on the digital/film dilemma another time, but for now I’ll just say that I happy to use the D3’s nine frames-per-second capacity when Hans got a bit fancy with his footwork and fell from the slack-line (onto his safely line) and I captured the entire fall without the camera missing a beat.
— Simon Carter
CRUX Magazine - issue #6 · 22 April 2008
Issue #6 of the Australian CRUX Magazine is out. It was a massive team effort with over 70 people contributing articles, photos and helping out with editing. I think it has resulted in something that the Oz climbing community can be very proud of.
The magazine is once again a bumper 80 pages packed with the kind of informative, entertaining and irreverent content we’ve come to expect from CRUX. Subtitled the “Girlpower” special, the issue has numerous articles by women and about women’s climbing. There were a few comments on Chockstone.org (Australia’s most popular climbing forum) that the women’s content didn’t go far enough. I think it was a commendable effort by the CRUX editor and the contributors to get so much good content on the subject together in the one issue. Bearing in mind that an editor is always going to look for some balance even if deciding to publish a “special” feature edition (when CRUX published a Blue Mountains and Road Trip special editions, not every article in the magazine was devoted to those subjects, so the women’s edition was consistent with this approach).
As Lee Cujes commented “It would seem to me that women contributed on or were the focus of the majority of the main articles in the mag. I can’t see a published Aussie example of where this has been done better previously.” I know that the CRUX editor has made a consistently concerted effort to source material on women’s climbing ever since the magazine’s inception (or err, conception). Even so, I think it’s great that the CRUX editor decided to make an extra special effort to source so much material on women’s climbing. I think the few comments that the women’s material didn’t go far enough are indicative of how the subject has been so badly covered by Australian magazines in the past. Perhaps CRUX’s treatment of the subject wasn’t perfect, maybe it could have gone further (though that may have been difficult without reducing the appeal of the magazine to the majority of readers), but I think it’s good that at least CRUX has made a serious effort on the subject. It’s not as if CRUX has 30 years of neglecting the issue to make up for!
This issue marks the two years of CRUX publication; quite a milestone! CRUX has kept to the larger A4 format after much feedback on the Photo Annual. As a photographer I’m happy to see that as it’s so much better for the photography. There were other arguments both ways about the size (the first four issues were A5) but in the end it was clear that the larger format is something that advertisers were particularly keen for. Keeping advertisers happy is important for the viability of the magazine. CRUX is not using the news agency distribution model, it is only sold through outdoor equipment shops and climbing gyms or mail-order online. It can be a difficult decision for a magazine to decide which distribution methods to use. If CRUX used news agency distribution it could print many thousands more magazines, and if it wanted it could then use these print run figures to boast to potential advertisers, however unless they disclosed the actual number sold then that would likely be misleading when many of the magazines may not be sold – and just end up getting pulped! I remember a few years back Chris Baxter, the then owner of Rock Magazine, telling me that they didn’t sell as much as three quarters of the magazines that they tried to distribute via news agencies. Well I think it’s environmentally irresponsible. And if I was a potential advertiser I’d want to be sure I know aht sort of figures I was being quoted (”readership” is usually just pie in the sky guess work).
Yes, I like CRUX Magazine. Over the years I’ve also given Rock lot of support (I’ve contributed far more photographs to the magazine than any other contributor; my photographs have featured on at least 14 covers). I’d like to see both magazines thrive and prosper. I think having two magazines is good for the Australian climbing community; there’s a lot going on, no magazine can cover it all, and two mags provide some balance. I particularly like CRUX because the editor seems very open to ideas and the editor, contributors and designers have done a far better job of capturing the vibe of the Australian climbing scene. That’s why I’m supporting the magazine and am trying to do my little bit by using some of my business’s infrastructure to help out with distributing the magazine. That’s why you can purchase mail-order copies and subscriptions from here.
Check it out and let the editor (Neil Monteith) know what you think. Next issue is due out in September.
— Simon Carter
Just married! · 3 April 2008
Last Saturday, 29th March, I married my sweetheart, Monique Forestier, in a delightful little ceremony at Anvil Rock in the Blue Mountains. We’ve been together for eight years, so it’s fair to say I was a little slow about getting around to this. It was well worth the wait though. The ceremony, the reception (at Balquhain Manor House in Blackheath), catching up with friends and family, in fact every aspect of the day – was just perfect!
Much to our amusement there have already been a few “Mrs Carter” jokes floating around here. For the record though, Monique will be keeping her maiden name — Forestier. I didn’t want her to give that up.
Many thanks to Josh Caple for taking on the potentially intimidating job of shooting a photographers wedding (he took the four photos above). Thanks also to Cathy McBey (my assistant) for talking some shots (one of hers is below).
— Simon Carter
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Climbing Magazine Cover and Feature · 27 March 2008
The April 2008 issue of Climbing Magazine (USA) features one of my photos on the cover, a sequence of shots on the gatefold, and a five page photo feature of my images from Joshua Tree, in California, USA.
Many thanks indeed to the climbers who generously helped with the photography and helped make my (and Monique’s) visit to J-Tree a particularly productive, enjoyable and memorable time: Kate Rutherford, Greg Loniewski, David Stallard, Nicholas Mahmood, Tony Sartin, Doug Acorn, Sonja Djuricin, Phil Tifo and Greg Epperson. My apologies to those whose names I’ve overlooked or forgotten.
The cover photos and gatefold sequence is of Kate Rutherford leading the moderate classic Illusion Dweller.
— Simon Carter
Web server crash · 2 March 2008
My web service provider had a severe server failure on 13 January. As a result we have had to reconfigure several sections of this site…
UPDATE:
– The Online SHOP has been restored and is working normally.
– The Photo GALLERY is back online and we are now regularly adding new images. We have to add a lot of images again though, so please bear with us as it will take some weeks to restore the galleries and add many new photos.
– This NEWS Blog is online and working properly (as you can see). I plan to eventually reload some of the previous content, however there is a lot going on at the moment and I’d prefer to spend my blogging time looking forward and updating the site with new info and images.
My apologies for any inconvenience.
— Simon Carter