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2018 01 04

Behind the Camera : The World’s Most Dangerous Airport

SCooper Behind the Camera, Everest Base Camp airport, ebc, everest, featured, hillary, light aircraft, lukla, panorama, photography, plane, tenzing, travel, world's most dangerous airport 0

Getting a little too quiet around here…

2017 was almost looking like an unadventurous year for me. I’d had a nice short break in Devon with my family early in the year but after that the process of settling in to my new job and new home city, along with an illness that drained me mentally for quite a few months, no travel had occurred and combined with my tendency to over analyse everything I write this blog and my passion to write had been dwindling. To think that my year changed so drastically thanks to a wedding invitation from one of my colleagues and new friend who was preparing to marry his Nepalese fiancé in her home town of Kathmandu, Nepal. When he showed me that invite I without hesitation agreed. Not only was the idea of attending a Hindu wedding in a foreign country a pretty cool prospect, I knew it’d put me smack bang in the right country to do something that me and Andy had talked about doing last year but couldn’t due to time; the Everest Base camp trek.

And that’s how on November 18th 2017, after months of preparing gear and training and a four hour delay (most of which was spent sat in a greenhouse-esque coach on the tarmac of the airport) I found myself fearing for my life in the air on a tiny 18 seat airplane heading from Kathmandu to the Tenzing Hillary Airport in Lukla (also known as the “World’s most dangerous airport”). An airport at 2845m with an 11% gradient runway and surrounded by terrain that makes a second landing attempt almost impossible that when you finally do land gives you an indescribable appreciation for the simple fact you’re alive. Day 1: Already feel in over my head.

Prior to this questionable mode of transportation, I had spent 4 days in the Thamel district of Kathmandu ensuring I had all my gear in place and all the appropriate clothing for the potential weather conditions ahead. I don’t think any amount of preparation would have truly made me feel ready for what lay ahead in the 15 day trek but stepping on to the tarmac of that remote airport, surrounded by such serene beauty, I could barely contain my excitement for the journey ahead. I certainly wasn’t going to let 2017 end without some crazy adventure.

“Leaving Kathmandu”

“Touchdown at Lukla”

What does this actually involve?

I wanted to keep the main content of this post pretty short but for those who have somehow managed to stumble across my blog (hello by the way) and are unfamiliar with the Everest Base Camp Trek, much like I was before this trip, here’s a quick rundown.

The trek itself starts in the town of Lukla at the Tenzing Hillary airport at an altitude of 2845m. This airport serves as the hub for this entire mountain region, there are no roads and all supplies come in through this airport. Over the next few days the trail leads through the Khumbu mountain region slowly gaining elevation until finally (or hopefully) on day 8 you reach Everest Base Camp at 5364m. It’s important along the way to gain altitude as slowly as possible to give your body the best chance to acclimatise to the lack of oxygen in the air. Altitude sickness can affect anyone independent of fitness, gender or age and it can really come down to pot-luck as to whether you’ll get hit or not. If ignored altitude sickness can become serious and very often fatal. The first 8 days include some additional, and horrifically titled “rest days” where you’ll spend an additional night at the same altitude but ascend much higher during the day to prepare your body for the following day.

If only attempting to reach base camp, it’s possible to do the entire trek in around 12 days. Despite, or possibly due to, my lack of experience I opted to do add some additional destinations on to my itinerary that I’d been informed would make for some excellent photos but would not come easily. I was in no way mentally or physically prepared for this trip, it was something I had decided I wanted to do and decided I’d work it out as I went along.

Upon setting off for Nepal this was the daily plan provided by my guide:

Day 1: Fly to Lukla, trek to Phakding (2610m)

Day 2: Trek to Namche (5 hours – 3440m)

Day 3: Rest day

Day 4: Trek to Tengboche (6 hours – 3860m)

Day 5: Trek to Dingboche (6 hours – 4410m)

Day 6: Rest day

Day 7: Trek to Lobuche (5 hours – 4910m)

Day 8: Trek to Gorak Shep (5410m), hike to base campe (5354m)

Day 9: Hike to Kalapatthar (5550m), trek to Dzonglha (4830m)

Day 10: Cross the Cho La Pass (8 hours – 5368m), rest at Thangnag (4700m)

Day 11: Trek to Gokyo (4790m)

Day 12: Trek to Gokyo Ri (5357m), trek to Machhermo

Day 13: Trekyt to Dhole (4110m)

Day 14: Trek to Namche (5 hours – 3440m)

Day 15: Trek to Lukla

Day 16: Fly the Kathmandu

If you have enjoyed reading this or have any questions please feel free to post a comment.

2017 03 15

Behind the Camera : The Rice Fields of Sapa

SCooper Blog, South East Asia featured 0

Previous post in this series here.

Next post in this series here.

I’d say the biggest problem with deciding to visit South East Asia during July and August is that it’s bordering on the edge of the rainy season. For the entire trip, I felt like we were managing to somehow keep just ahead of the bad weather and there were times we heard that places we had just been in were flooding and being subjected to torrential rain. On the bright side of that (pun totally intended), it’s also the tourist off-season so there was never an issue of being able to find space at a hostel.

Country number two on the tour and where this next story takes us is Vietnam. A country with an incredible, and quite recent history of revolution, communism and war all of which is still very much present in the minds of people you speak to there today. Following mine and Andy’s stay in Laos, and the regrettable decisions made in the backpacker party town of Vang Vieng, we met with Andy’s brother, Billy, in Hanoi Airport for the next leg of the trip. The capital city of Hanoi is a stark contrast to the experiences of Laos with its cluttered streets, dense onslaught of scooters and that odd ‘off’ smell that seemed to linger around every corner, but the rich history on offer gave plenty of reasons to explore the city and meet some of the locals who seem to enjoy any opportunity to practice their English. Growing up in England I’d found most people generally don’t talk to you randomly in the street unless it’s to argue with you or ask you for change. After overcoming my initial apprehension, I learned that most people there are incredibly friendly and genuinely just want to chat with you (except the taxi drivers). With only 48 hours in Hanoi we tried to cram as much of the city in as humanly possible and were notably able to include the WW2 prison, several museums, a water puppet show (that one’s hard to explain), extensive walking around the city and the rather unfortunate decision to sample some of the local cuisine.

Now, don’t misjudge me here, I love trying to new food, but all I can say is that mine (and Andy’s) stomachs were still a little too fragile after events in Laos – which I am not permitted to disclose in such a public forum – and we probably should had played it a little safer than a back-alley food stall where we were served a dish of pigeon while sat on tiny stools next to the road. I guess we were going to get ill eventually but I think it may have given our newcomer to the trip, Billy, the wrong idea of what the rest of the holiday would entail when we opted for dominos and KFC the next few days in a poor attempt to recover.

I personally find travelling that you tend to meet some pretty interesting people along the way and Hanoi was no exception where we shared a room with a guy named Jay, a juggler from Bristol who joined us on our second day of exploring the city, the mausoleum and more museums as we chatted shit about life, love and religion proving the people you meet on a journey can be as interesting as the places you visit.

In an effort to save money and time in what was a pretty intense two-month schedule, we had booked a sleeper bus (our first of many in the end) to take us further north to Sapa known for its picturesque rice fields and villages. I honestly didn’t really know what to expect from a Vietnamese sleeper bus and it was an enlightening experience over the course of the next two months experiencing the wide varieties and qualities of the various night buses we would travel on and the service stations they would visit (and the food on offer at these locations), this first bus did however set the standard for all future buses in that they would:

a) not be made with the height of a 6″2 westerner in mind

b) not enable you to get a good night’s sleep but

c) provide a perfect opportunity to don our fetching new attire of ‘elephant trousers’.

The bus arrived in Sapa around 3am but on advice from the operators we were all permitted to stay on board until 6am as the area was known to potentially be a bit dodgy. Waking up, far from refreshed, we were tasked with locating our hostel as well as making our way through the masses of people who had congregated outside our bus in an attempt to lead us to hostels they were affiliated with or to offer tours of their villages. Our next hour was spent wandering relatively lost with a small group of women lurking behind us dressed in their traditional Vietnamese clothing, like a pack of wolves, waiting for any sign of weakness or any member of our group to trail slightly behind so they could pounce and attempt to sell their wares.

After eventually making it to our hostel, which we wearily and regretfully learned was at the top of a very steep hill, we opted to set up base camp in the hostel lobby and shower, change and sleep as we were far too early for check-in. It was a surprisingly nice pit-stop from the hectic few days we’d had, little did we know things were only going to get more tiring and hectic as the trip went on, but for now we were able to enjoy the idyllic Sapa region with its unending, tiered fields of rice in every direction as far as the eye could see. Unfortunately for us though, the eye was not able to see that far; rainy season was creeping up on us. We were still able to enjoy walks around the beautiful, if what slightly touristy, local villages as well as getting lost trying to find some of them before having to give up and call a taxi (not easy when you have no idea where you are). But we were never able to really experience the Sapa we had seen in photos nor ever even see the peak of Mt Fansipan (the highest mountain in Vietnam).

Even with the weather, the dodgy snot-like soup we had one evening and the street beating of a local we witnessed and quickly ran away from, Sapa is still an incredible place any time of year and as a group we were lucky enough to have that experience enhanced by a very friendly taxi driver. A taxi driver who managed to find us in the middle of nowhere after getting ourselves lost and took us on an amazing tour of the local villages where we got to experience things we never would have found on our own. We learnt how they make indigo dye and cane juice, about the rice crop itself and the unbelievable fact that despite the entire region being covered in rice fields, it is only enough rice to sustain the Sapa area and none of it is exported.

I guess the lesson of this story is that having a very limited amount of time to visit a lot of countries and being limited by what time of year I was able to go, I was going to have to accept that as a photographer, I wasn’t always going to get that perfect shot I pictured in my head. I could have spent days or weeks out there even at the right time of year waiting for the perfect weather and perfect time of day but that’s not what I was ultimately out there for and at this point in the trip I had no idea if I was ever going to get that perfect photo of any of the places I was going to visit, maybe I was going to time it just wrong everywhere; fortunately that was not the case but that’s a story for another day.

2016 12 30

Behind the Camera : Titterstone Radar Station

SCooper Behind the Camera, Blog astro, astrophotography, dark, featured, long exposure, night sky, radar station, stars 0

What's the stupidest thing you have ever done for a photo?

This was a question I saw posted on a photography forum I frequent a few weeks ago. I thought about it at the time and realised I’ve done quite a few stupid things to try and get a photo I wanted. Then the more I thought about it, the more I realised that most the photos I have written about, or want to write about, for my Behind the Camera posts seem to have a story behind them that encapsulate my responses to that question quite nicely. Maybe I should be renaming this series to “That time I did a stupid thing to take a photo”.

A few years ago my parents packed up and moved from the town I had called home for twenty years to a small rural village. I’ve been wanting to explore the local area more but with only infrequent and short visits back, now that I have “flown the nest”, it has proven difficult to ever really get the time. One particular location I wanted to visit was this large reflective object at the peak of a hill off in the distance that I always noticed during my drive to and from home. Suspecting it may prove ideal for some night photography, I finally took some time out during this Christmas break to go on a proper scout.

The location itself is pretty stunning. It’s the highest peak in the area providing unobstructed views of the surrounding countryside and towns and features an old abandoned quarry forming an impressive cliff face along one side, an old radar station, which I now believe to be used by the met office, and some skeletons of old buildings dotted around presumably part of the old quarrying operations. There’s a lot of remnants of prior activity around the area and signage warning about restricted areas but after parking as high up the hill as the access road would allow, I continued on foot very much alone. There’s no clear route around the area but I spent my time walking the perimeter of the summit and getting up close to the old station. Having some previous experiences of how night shoots can turn out I made sure to pay careful attention to directions, rough distances and visual markers I could use to navigate with limited light. After satisfying myself with some golden hour shooting I made my way home with the aim of heading back out when the cloud cleared later that night (according to the weather updates on my phone).

I ended up heading out around 10pm that night and thought about turning back many times as I made my way down narrow country roads thick with heavy fog but the promise of a clear sky and the stars I could still make out through the fog as I drove kept me moving forward. Upon reaching the site I grew a little cautious at the site of the interior lights of another vehicle parked further up and along the hill but could not see any movement. I’m not one to be scared of the dark nor do I believe in the supernatural but what I do know is that out on some hillside with a load of expensive equipment, on my own and so late at night potentially makes me a target and as I made my way along my pre-planned route I couldn’t help but routinely look behind me. Reaching the spot I had scouted for a cliff shot I set up my gear and began shooting taking my time to make sure I got my settings right and shooting between the intermittent fog due to the heavy wind. Satisfied with the results of this location I moved further up the hill to compose a close up of the radar station. I must have only been shooting for a few minutes before I realised I could no longer see the station right in front of me and had been plunged in to further darkness as the towns in the distance were occluded by the fog. It was one of those moments where I felt genuinely, extremely vulnerable. Here I was all alone, with no phone signal, on a freezing hill top and, despite my relatively good selection of torches on hand, without a light source that could penetrate more than a few feet in to the fog around me and to top it off, a nice quarry cliff face near to my exit route I could no longer find. There’s not much more to say than that, it was kind of stupid, it was pretty scary and I figured I was either going to walk off a cliff or have some unfriendly individualy reveal themself in the fog around me; I probably should find a friend willing to accompany me on stupid trips like this and I’m fortunate that I had the foresight to scout the location out in daylight and make careful notes of terrain so that I could find my way back, maybe next time I’ll take some compass bearings too. Needless to say I was pretty damn relieved when I did make it back to my car and was able to relax and warm up.

But what about that mysterious car light I saw when I arrived? Well during my descent, that car was joined by another car; I’ll never know for certain what was really going on there but I have my theories and based on my previous experiences of astrophotography in remote car-parks that proved to be very popular and active late in to the night (and even had their own coffee van) I think we can all take an educated guess as to what the people in those cars were doing.

2016 11 13

Behind the Camera : The Gibbon Experience in Laos

SCooper Behind the Camera, Blog, South East Asia asia, backpacking, featured, gibbon experience, holiday, jungle, laos, travel, trekking, ziplining 0

Next post in this series here.

Geography and general knowledge, probably my two least favourite subjects when it comes to pub quizzes and my excuse for the fact that I knew very little of the country that would make up the first destination of my tour of South East Asia. On only my second day in Laos after a brief but eventful stay in the capital of Vientiane, myself and my travel buddy, Andy, made our way to the small border town of Huay Xai; or is it Houeisay, or maybe Houayxay, or even Houei Sai or Huoeisay? I don’t think I ever actually saw the town name wrote the same way more than once or twice, even while I was there, which in no way helped my confidence in having the correct plane tickets. The flight to the town was one of those eye-opening moments backpacking where you wake up and realise just how different the rest of the world is having grown up in a developed western environment. Making our way to the domestic terminal with the reassurance from the hostel owner that arriving only half an hour before the flight was plenty of time (he insisted even that was too early) we were greeted with a building more reminiscent of a run down bus terminal in which we sat quietly on plastic benches until our flight having just made it through the ‘security’ screening process of a small man sat behind a table in an empty room. So much for my panic of trying to get to the airport two hours before departure.

A short, cramped flight later in which we were stared at by the rest of the passengers who I can only assume found it funny to see two Westerners crammed together on the back row, we arrived at the Huay Xai terminal where we were escorted to an empty concrete room to wait for our luggage to be carried from the plane. One of the many things I enjoy about backpacking is that it’s not always easy and it’s not always obvious, some people run from that and others embrace it, and this flight and getting to where we needed to go, was not easy.

The border town of Huay Xai is a quaint little place consisting of a main street with most of the bars, hostels and shops and an almost shanty town like arrangement towards the outskirts. Our reason for being in this town was that it was the starting point of “The Gibbon Experience”, a treehouse, zip-line, jungle trekking trip that we’d be participating in over three days so with limited time available in the town we spent most of it exploring the main street, walking around a Buddhist temple (featuring an overly friendly dog who chased me for a while) and familiarising ourselves with the establishment across the road “Bar How?” which stocked an exotic range of infused whiskey flavours with everything from blood orange and blackcurrant to cinnamon and black rice.

The morning of the Gibbon experience consisted of series of videos and presentations from guides at the local office on the dos and don’ts of staying in the jungle and using the zip lines. Health and safety isn’t such a concern in Laos and you are very much responsible for your own safety and well-being throughout the duration, no one is going to hold your hand along the way. After signing a rather dubious declaration form essentially waiving all our rights to ever hold the company responsible for our death or any serious injury incurred we were bundled in to an open-back van, sandwiched between local workers and several bags of rice and potatoes, and driven to the jungle along incredible mountain passes and bumpy mud tracks.

At the conclusion of this journey we found ourselves in a small rural village where our trek through the jungle would begin. Being the wannabe adventure photographer I am I had forgone the advice to pack light for the journey (as we would be carrying our gear through steep, muddy terrain for several miles) and instead brought most of my camera gear, including tripod, along in the hope of catching some awesome moments. I’ll be the first to admit that my cardiovascular fitness was probably not great leading up in to this trip and whilst it may have significantly improved over the two months, this first trek was nothing short of brutal. There were many times I’d have considered giving up and many times I questioned what on earth I was doing (thinking all the way back to the point where I quit my job to come on this trip), but instead I wiped away the sweat and kept moving one foot in front of the other using the opportunity to speak with the other members of the group to distract myself from the humidity and heat.

As a group of 8, we had together opted that we would stick together for the duration of the experience meaning we would be staying in the park’s treehouse number 1, the only one on site large enough to house this size of group. In the true spirit of the Gibbon Experience it would not simply be a case of trekking to the treehouse. A few hours in to the trek we entered the clearing of “The Kitchen”, a small site used to cook for all guests staying in the park and where the food would be delivered from via zipline courier, it’s like the ultimate Saturday night takeaway delivery service. It was from here that everyone was kitted up in to their harnesses and given the final safety briefing, from here, all future trekking would be a combination of walking and zip-lining across valleys. I was the first to volunteer to go on the opening zipline, I’ve done plenty of highrope and zipline courses in my life, in fact I used to live down the road from a Go-Ape (UK Zip-line experience), but nothing could have prepared me for that first moment I stepped off the platform, went rushing through the jungle foliage and breached out in to the open soaring high above the jungle canopy. The pure adrenaline rush combined with the beauty of the surrounding landscape was something else and I doubt there’s many opportunities in the world that can match that experience. After another hour of trekking and zip-lining (trek-lining?) through the jungle we finally reached our home for the next few days, a three-story treehouse complete with kitchen sink and an unbeatable bathroom view overlooking the jungle (even if it did also include a wasps nest) and it was from this base camp that we would eat our meals, chat and play games late in to the night and share 3 incredible days together which were still incredible when it rained, or when we ran out of water, or even when we got attacked by rats in the night.

I’d love to write more about this particular part of the trip but I don’t think I’d ever get this post done if I tried so I’ll instead talk about the featured photo as is the point with this “Behind the Camera” series and hopefully one day I can expand on this a little.

When preparing for the Gibbon Experience in their Huay Xai office, there’d had been some incredible photos mounted on the walls but this one panoramic shot of a treehouse high above the jungle canopy really caught my eye and I was determined to try and photography something similar. Unfortunately, after a day of trekking around the different treehouses in the park I soon realised that the photo I had seen could only have been taken with a drone as at no point is there a big enough break in the trees to get that view. On our second day of the trip we were left by our guides in one of the only treehouses in the park that was completely exposed on all sides and, I believe in fact, the highest in the park. Here we were given a couple of hours to eat, rest and make use of the 3 nearby zip-lines as much as we desired. This I realised was my only opportunity to get the photo I wanted, all it meant was having to zip-line out of the tree, brake half way down (using the scrap tire mounted to the top of the runner), and then hold myself in position with one hand while suspended 150 feet up using my free hand to operate my camera, a drone would definitely be easier at this point. Unaware of what I would be doing and attempting to save weight on today’s trek I had opted for my 24mm cinelens, a completely manual, aperture and focus, lens so not just content with taking a photo suspended from a cable above the jungle being hard enough, I also had to manually focus and set aperture with my one hand. It was hard work, tiring and very unnerving. It wasn’t even like I did it first time either; my first attempt I braked too late down the line and was too far away for a good composition so had to release myself down the line, lie backwards to reel myself in the last 60 feet due to the cable slack and my low speed all with my camera equipment hanging precariously around my neck, and then trek back around the site to zip-line back in to the treehouse and attempt the photo over again. All in, it took me I believe four trips to finally get a composition I liked that was really sharp and in focus, and it was 100% worth the effort.

Acting as the opening to my two month trip around SEA, I don’t think I could have started it off any better than with the Gibbon Experience. It’s an incredible three day trip through the jungle that will leave you tired, sweaty and in my case absolutely shredded by bug bites but I wouldn’t have changed any of that for the incredible experiences and stories that came out of it; showering from a treetop balcony overlooking the jungle, having locals zipline food to the treehouse, soaring above the jungle canopy with a pack full of camera gear, meeting incredible like-minded people and staying up late in to the night laughing and playing games as the sky goes dark and the sounds of the jungle overwhelm you from all sides.

Breaking through the jungle

First lunch at our home for the trip

Andrew preparing to jump

More ziplines

2016 06 05

Snaps : It’s Magic

SCooper Blog black and white, card tricks, cards, featured, lighting, magic, modifiers, rouge light modifiers, snaps, studio 0

I do enjoy an opportunity to break out my light modifiers and there’s no one better to work with during a shoot than good friends, gets everyone way more relaxed and willing to work. Joe I met through work is a part-time magician and a damn good one at that. If you get a chance, check out his page at this link and the full album here.

2016 05 02

Snaps : Nightlife

SCooper Blog, Snaps cinelens, club photography, featured, nightlife, ramshackle, samyang 24t1.5 0

Last month I visited my good friend and former colleague and boss Sam Short. Sam was on the same course as me at the University of Bath but during his time studying set up a thriving photography business specialising in nightlife and club photography. He took me on as his fourth photographer to join the team and turned me from a quiet nerd who rarely left the house in to a better, more confident and outgoing photographer.
I’m sure there’s a lot of people who would probably look down on club photography and for the most part I think that’s because there’s a lot of trash out there being produced however as a company we really cared about our image and the work we did and this reflected in the photos we produced. In just a couple of years we were covering every major club and night in the city.
I’ve moved away from Bath and the nightlife work now to pursue engineering and while I do miss the status and friends I made in the industry, I know deep down it was the right thing to do to push my career forwards.
During my visit last month I was able to follow Sam round as he worked at the o2 Arena in Bristol which presented a great opportunity to take some photos of my own using my Samyang 24mmT1.5 lens that I’d always wanted to test out in a club environment. Typically all clubs shots we produce are shot with an external flash so I was just trying to have a play with some low light, ambient light photography, challenging but I think I got some great photos out of it. Check out the full album here.
If you do get a chance, check out my friends site and work at Soul Media.

2016 04 10

Snaps : Guilin to Yangshou

SCooper Snaps china, featured, guilin, li river, snaps, yangshou 0

I’ve been revisiting a lot of my China travel photos recently as when I edited them, I probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind and also doing a lot of batch editing as I wanted them done and posted. Now I’ve got a bit more time to really play around with individual photos, try out some new editing techniques and see what I missed the first time round.

This particular photo is of a riverboat ride along the Li River between the cities of Guilin and Yangshou. Absolutely stunning, almost prehistoric like, landscape.

2016 03 15

Behind the Camera : Walking the Wall – Throwback

SCooper Behind the Camera, Blog, Throwback behind the camera, beijing, china, featured, global grand challenges, great wall of china, photography, RAE, royal academy of engineering, summit, throwback, travel 0

My intention for this site was originally just to keep an online portfolio of my favourite work and while it will somewhat feature this intention I’ve come to the realisation that I’d much prefer to keep a record of the stories behind some of my favourite photos. Not every photo has a story behind it and of those that do, many may not be interesting or worth telling, but the ones that are worth telling are what I feel I should use this site for.

For me, what I enjoy most about travelling, besides getting away from work for a while, is the experiences and stories we can come back with. I know many people that are more than content with having a lazy holiday, lay by the pool, getting a tan, going shopping or whatever; but that’s not for me. Not that I think what they’re doing is wrong, it’s just not for me, I need to be out there, doing things, witnessing things and experiencing things otherwise I feel like I’m not making the most of the place I’m in and all it has to offer.

However, as much as I may want to travel, it’s not something I can regularly do and write about cue these throwback entries. The idea of these being that I can tell some old stories about some of my favourite shots and how they came about starting with one of my more recent photos from China September 2015.

This is another photo that I have to be thankful for the Royal Academy of Engineering scholarship for. Through their scheme I was able to secure an invitation to the Global Grand Challenges Summit in Beijing thus leading to possibly the greatest trip of my life thus far. The Global Grand Challenges Summit is an event organised by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering along with the Chinese and American equivalent academies aimed at highlighting the challenges that humanity, scientists and engineers face today ranging from security and health all the way to the joy of living and revitalising urban infrastructure. The two day conference is one of those events where you just can’t fail to be drawn in to the energy and atmosphere created by your surroundings and the speakers on stage and it genuinely makes you feel like, if you put your head and heart to it, you could achieve anything you wanted to, and help save the world. I’ve questioned a lot about myself and my careers choices since those two days and try to act on those lessons whenever possible. One of the things I’m most thankful for about that conference and the RAE scheme itself, is that it introduced me to my travelling companions for the next few weeks following the two day conference. These were people I had only ever briefly met before, once a year at the RAE annual get-together but we had all taken a risk and agreed to go travelling together following the conference.

Photo Credit: Pooja Moonka

The stories we made for ourselves and experiences we had on that trip make me consider these people some of my closest friends despite the relatively short time I’ve known them, but when you live together in tiny hostel rooms for any amount of time, without showering, and spend every day exploring a strange country together like that, I think it’s impossible not to either massively fall out with them or consider them a close friend after that. Beyond these three people I spent the majority of the trip with, I was also lucky enough to share time with other great people along the way who I’d met at the conference and I don’t think anything will ever beat some of the nights out we had together clubbing in Beijing when we had around 40 American and UK young engineers piling in to a small bar and overflowing out on the street, dancing on tables, singing at the top of our lungs and drinking in to the early hours of the morning (all while being filmed extensively by locals passing by who were fascinated by so many western tourists together at once).

One of my biggest concerns about not knowing who I was travelling with was whether they would tolerate my constant desire to stop and take photos, I know it’s not to everyone’s liking and for those who just want to walk and explore it must be infuriating to have to stop and wait on someone like myself or so my parents have told me after the many times I went on holiday with them growing up, fortunately though I was with like-minded individuals who were more than happy themselves to stop and take their own photos at every opportunity they could.

My favourite photo from the whole trip, and currently on my wall as part of my “Best of 2015 Series” was definitely from the Great Wall of China. My group and I arranged to visit the Wall while in Beijing through our hostel (Downtown Backpackers) who provided transport and a friendly guide, Jerry (one of the hostel workers). The trip was advertised as a 10km walk of the wall, it sounded amazing. Up until this point we had been mostly confined to the conference and city so I considered this our first proper adventure out in China.

The day began fairly early with us being picked up from the hostel by mini-bus, worrying that we would be too early for breakfast we had stocked up on yoghurts, cucumber flavoured crisps and cookies for the journey the night before but were pleasantly surprised by the offering of more cookies and snickers bars from our hostel upon entering the vehicle. I think our excessive number of cookies ended up lasting us until almost the end of the entire trip!

The drive itself was fairly uneventful, but we began to have concerns over the legitimacy of our trip as we approached our final destination. Every mile or so we would see big signs and billboards reading “Keep Out”, “This area of the wall off limits”, “Thank you for not entering this area of the wall”, of course our mini-bus ignored all of these and headed straight on, who were we to question it.

The early morning light marking our path through the forest

Unlike most organised trips to the Great Wall, this one did not intend on dropping us off at one of the hotspots of the wall that are renovated and officially open to the public, instead we were dropped at the base of a steep hill outside a thick forest. The next forty minutes were a fairly gruelling uphill struggle (for some of our party anyway) and several of us, myself included, did fall a tad far behind the main party. Part of our journey up hill was brightened up by a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for Pooja, one of the members of our group, which another tourist group also got involved in.

Along the way we were only treated to brief clearings in the foliage to see how high we were and where we were going and it never prepared me for when I rounded a corner and was then just smack bang, up against the wall.

It can get pretty steep and slippery on the wall

Despite following one of the hostel workers, it still felt like a real adventure elevated by the act of having to climb up on to wall using a ladder made of lashed together branches. An official tour of the wall would never take you to the areas we visited but we were treated to 6km of incredible scenery along the crumbling remains of one of the greatest man-made structures in existence. Many parts of the route are dangerous but it is all beautiful and I couldn’t help but have a grin on my face the whole way despite the heat and exhaustion caused by my poor fitness.

Andy on the edge

After around 6km of walking, the frequency in which we saw other people increased greatly along with the general structural integrity of the wall itself and eventually we passed a sign that only solidified our belief that we probably weren’t meant to have walked the previous 6km we had. We took a moment to celebrate this milestone and the Pooja’s Birthday with a can of beer each at 11am stood on the Great Wall of China, not many who can say they’ve celebrated their birthday like that.

I don’t think we were meant to go there

The photo I’m most happy with from this day occurred during the final 4km of the excursion of the more built up section of the wall. I’d been trying to capture the perfect panorama to commemorate the day, going so far as to climb up crumbling towers to get a better vantage point, but think I finally achieved it with this one. It may not be the most technically brilliant photo but I think the composition works well and I love that it features several members of the group I travelled with within it even if they weren’t aware of it at the time. This makes it not just a photo of the Great Wall of China to me, but a photo of amazing friends I made during some of the greatest weeks of my life.

2016 03 14

Behind the Camera : Lost in Hollywood

SCooper Behind the Camera, Blog featured, hollyridge, hollywood, LA, sign, skyline, sunset 1

I was recently lucky enough to attend the Unity Vision Summit in Hollywood Los Angeles thanks to some funding from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering. As fantastic as that conference was, it’s not the story I want to write about now.

I’d managed to secure myself four days for this trip, two would be taken up by the conference, one by a completely necessary trip to Disneyland and the final just for wondering around Hollywood before my departure back to the cold, gloomy UK leaving the beautiful LA sunshine behind me. Having not had many opportunities to do any, what I would call, “proper” photography as of late there was one shot I was determined to try and get during my visit. A panorama of the LA skyline from behind the Hollywood sign.

My initial research raised a lot of potential pitfalls for this attempted shot as it turns out the locals of the Hollywood sign have been waging an ongoing war with tourists attempting to visit the sign by campaigning for the closure of routes and access but a day before I left for my trip I was able to find the recommended route, the Hollyridge Trail, that starts at the end of Beachwood Drive.

With limited time to act and a fairly set plan of what I was doing each day I decided the best time to attempt this photo was at the end of the second day of the conference that should leave me enough time to complete the 1.5 mile route and reach the sign by sunset and after a slightly hairy Uber ride to the Sunset Ranch that marked the beginning of the trail, I was on my way.

The trail itself is very enjoyable, despite the slightly worrying sign warning of mountain lions and rattlesnakes, and gives fantastic views over the city but the views reaching the peak are simply phenomenal. I ended up spending around an hour at the peak behind the sign shooting the sunset and city lights and it was an incredible experience just being able to sit there and take it all in.

Unfortunately the sign is now fenced off and you are unable to get near it (I’ve heard armed police are involved if you do attempt to) which does mar the resulting photos slightly but nothing a heavy amount of photoshop clone stamping and several hours of your life can’t attempt to fix.

Getting back to civilisation was a feat in itself though. Having spent around an hour at the peak shooting the sunset and ensuing city lights as darkness crept in I realised it was probably time to go. In a moment of brief forward thinking I had managed to remember to pack a head-torch with me for the trip but had, stupidly, underestimated just how dark it can get on these trails. Cue me spending a mile and a half fumbling my way through the dark attempting to stick to the correct trail while expecting to get attacked by a mountain lion or rattlesnake at any moment. It really was one of those moments of brilliant clarity where I analysed everything that had lead me to that moment and how incredibly dangerous it was doing what I was doing completely on my own. There’s wild animals, the path is pretty uneven in places and for most of it the edge of the path just leads to a straight drop down in to the canyon. But there we go, I’m still here, I’m still in one piece and a did make it back down with no issues despite a brief encounter with a coyote who thankfully ignored me and I then enjoyed a slow walk back to my hotel for the next five miles.

I made a really stupid decision that night leaving it so late to leave the sign especially with being on my own, but you know what? It was completely worth it. Life’s all about the memories we make for ourselves and it’s these experiences that define who we are. I think I got a great story out of this trip and I love the photo I got from it and that’s what matters to me. Eventually I’ll get this shot printed and hung in my apartment somewhere and it will bring back the memories of that evening every time I look at it.