Latest Feature: Backcountry bouldering

Niko sending at So High...

My latest feature came out in Ojai Quarterly yesterday. I really like getting to still publish in a print magazine with glossy pages, no electron fade... Getting rarer and rarer these days. I am waiting not so patiently for a small resurgence of quality, image driven publications in printed form before the presses and ink manufacturers all go under too...

This was a fun project to work on with a very strong and dedicated climber in Southern California that has a strong penchant for wild and remote and highball first ascents. I have followed him out on a few occasions and often just getting there feels akin to climbing a runout trad route on tiny gear and loose rock... One approach I managed to pull a 100 pound sandstone flake onto my head and nearly sever my man parts and femoral artery on a backcountry mission trying to keep up...

Smashed fingers, crunched ankles all seem fairly standard fare for Niko and he still keeps climbing hard and putting up FA's despite his somewhat common and normally sidelining injuries... I am looking forward to getting back and having another adventure as it seems Niko has struck a bit of bouldering gold again with another remote find hidden in the folds and chaparral...

Niko's new guidebook should be wrapped up before too long sharing lots of exciting boulder problems in So Cali...

images and writing ©Bennett Barthelemy

Convergance: A photo essay

Convergence - Disparate elements coming together at the same point. The fracturing of sunlight at the hard edge. Fingers connecting to a hard edge of stone.. The super moon falling closer in the sea of sky... A coalescing, a promise in the making. 

It has been a strange couple of weeks for me. Creativity, pain, hope - all colliding in more intense ways than I might ever have imagined. My own satellite finally escaping it's internal corporeal orbit, a stone from my kidney that's final release coincided with this super moon. A star wars style laser finishing it. 

Tuesday I wandered the pier at twilight as the sun rose and the giant moon set. My kidney and bladder and ureter still aflame, my mind a jumble from heavy narcotics. Alone, in the company of sea birds, I released a red stream of bloody urine into the hissing sea, said goodbye to bits of blasted stone, to blinding agony. 

I kept quiet company with the resting birds as the morning drew on and the golden light crescendoed. My camera, this ocular eye of eye, grounding me and setting me free. All voice, vision, breath - caught, held, exhaled. Again. And again.

all images ©Bennett Barthelemy November 2016

Staring At The Sun: A photo essay

Seems I choose to stare at the sun a little more these days...

Living for quite some time this last year during the darker months at northern latitudes in Scandinavia has me exposing eyes and heart to the light and warmth again... and putting the new my 14mm to work.

all images ©Bennett Barthelemy/Tandem Stills + Motion

Upside Down: A photo essay

A friend sent me this quote by Rumi yesterday.

"Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?"

Seems quite apropos given the frenetic changes of late... Finding solace embracing natural light, engaging splitter cracks, new sunrises - and spending time with new and old friends...

All image ©Bennett Barthelemy June 2016

Light-chasing Adventures...

Some images from some recent light-chasing adventures… four-legged and feathered inspiration, family, old friends and new, sunrises, rocks, desert blue skies, salty air…

It has been a sweet new year so far.

Craving my mountain fix… Soon!

Chaos..

I found a corner of Rocky Mountain National Park I had not yet explored last week. Still drifts of spring snow among the vast labyrinth of swirly gneiss boulders know as Chaos, all well above 10,000 feet... Always inspiring to see steep and ridiculously hard boulder problems pieced together move by seemingly impossible move...

Emily Jean...

Rob D'Anastasio sends a V9 second try

Dariusz about to top out

Bouldering...

Got a good schooling today on hard bouldering... Not by doing it but by shooting it. Respect.

Boulder Boulder

A Portrait of Hiro Watanabe

Always eye-opening to hang out with young super-mutants - When the warm up is some random V7 they just spotted and it goes in about 10 minutes of "work".

A Portrait of Alexandra Kahn

I was happy to hide behind the camera and watch them dance up highballs with mossy top outs. Perspective building for sure, and nice to get out in the woods and hike - like four miles no less... Shattered my belief that boulderers were so inclined because they hated hiking and lacked stamina.

Hiro and Alex at Work...

For some more pics of the day check out this link at Tandem Stills and Motion.

Alex lives and breathes bouldering and has some pretty sweet visuals/video from around the globe and from several years of pulling down with Paul Robinson...http://alexandrakahnmedia.wordpress.com/