My Life As an Adventure Filmmaker and Photographer (Part 2) | Nat Geo Live

Like any budding photographer, you know I was, of course, I got National Geographic magazine. That's sort of the standard in photography. I remember when this issue came in the mail; it was called "Storming the Tower." I read the story, and it was about four guys from Wyoming that went to Pakistan and they climbed this tower called the Nameless Tower. It was an epic adventure; it was like two months long. They kept getting like the weather was keeping them from completing this objective and there was like war in Pakistan, and they were having to like argue with the government because their visa was well up. They just like pounded against all these obstacles; against all odds, it was extremely difficult. When they did the route, I remember reading it and being like, "That is a serious adventure! That's incredible!"

Well, in Colorado, it wasn't uncommon to see people rock climbing at different places, and I had a couple of friends that did it. So, I called up a buddy of mine; his name was Ty. I told him about the story that I'd read, and I asked him if he would take me out, and he did. We went out climbing, and for the next few years, I just fell in love right away. I got really into it, and this now became this new reason to go on little weekend adventures, find a new climbing area, and go with new people. It was a new community of people as well.

Well, in September of 2003, I took a really bad fall. I fell about 35 feet, which is high, but I landed on my side, which is like a terrible place to land, right? I broke my neck, broke my pelvic bone, fractured my kidney and my liver, and I completely collapsed my right lung ribs. I spent six days in the ICU, and it was a pretty serious accident, and I swore off climbing. Right, it didn't take much; I was like, "That was enough." I was like, "Okay." In my defense of rock climbing, I was climbing very recklessly. I was placing gear poorly, and when I fell, it didn't hold because I was rushing and I was overconfident.

Well, I was freelancing for a magazine outside of my job at Hewlett-Packard with a magazine called Wyoming Homes and Living. I had a friend that worked there, and I would get like two or three little assignments from them a year. About, I don't know, four months after the accident, after I'd kind of healed up, I got a phone call from one of the editors, and they said, "We got a perfect story for you. We want you to go to Devil's Tower in Wyoming, and we want you to go climb the tower with this guy Frank Sanders. You'll stay at his lodge, and it'll be a travel piece, but you'll get to—we know you like to rock climb, so we thought of you right away."

So, I told them what had happened. I said, "Well, you know, I recently had a bad accident, but I wanted the assignment." I wanted the job because I wanted to be a photographer, and these were little vignettes into what it was like to be a photographer. So I said, "Well, I'll tell you what, can I get Frank's number? Let me just call him and I'll see what this is all about, like what this job's like."

So, I called Frank up, and like a classic Wyoming guy, I told him my story about falling, and he's like, "Look man, you had a bad fall, you got to get back on the horse." He's like, "You know, you made mistakes; you should come up here. This is going to help you, you know? You need to overcome this." And Frank, I didn't realize that he's a legendary rock climber—his fingerprints are all over the planet. Like, he's done first ascents everywhere, and he's really well known for his Devil's Tower climbing, but I didn't know that at the time. So, he convinced me to come up, so I did.

The way it worked was Frank took me and two others up the tower. He led the first pitch, and I would come up behind him and then I would photograph the writer as she came up. She'd never rock climbed before. He was taking us up the easiest climb on the tower, and she didn't have the right climbing gear; she had like a bicycle helmet on, so it looked kind of weird. Then Frank would go up; I was shooting him, and it was like butt shots, you know? The pictures weren't really that great, but I saw the potential, as I hadn't looked at climbing really through my camera up to that point.

So when I got home, I called up a friend of mine; I called my friend Brian. He was the best climber I knew, and I said, "Man, I want to go out and shoot some climbing photos," and I had an idea of what I wanted to shoot. I said, "There's this bridge just outside of town, and somebody's bolted like river rocks to the actual rocks to the bottom of this bridge." He knew exactly what I was talking about, and so we went down and took a photo of it. He had just gotten sponsored by a shoe company, so he was a pretty good climber. Of course, I printed him off like a 13 by 19; I was like, "Here you go, man!"

He said, "Hey, can I send this to the shoe company?" I was like, "Yeah, go right ahead; here's another one for you if you're sending that." You know I just zipped them one off. So, he sends it out, and like a week later, I get a phone call, and they said, "Hey, we just got this picture from Brian, a big picture, and they said we love it. Can we buy it for an ad?" I was like, "Yeah, be amazing!" They gave me like 300 bucks. I was like, "Yes! Amazing!"

So, I was like, "We got to go out again," you know? He also had a watch sponsorship as well, so we went out and took some pictures, and he sent them off to these guys, and they bought an ad but they actually didn't pay me—they sent me 30 watches as payment. 30 watches! Yeah, I think my dad still has a couple. It's a classic; I just gave them away. Like, "What are you going to do with 30 watches?" But it was cool. It printed, you know? And I'd see it in the magazines, and it's like, "This is really cool," and the success rate was amazing.

So, Brian said to me, "You got to meet this guy Andy Rother." He's like, "This dude's a real rock climber," right? And he really was—you know, living out of his truck. He's a classic dirtbag. In the climbing industry, they're called dirtbags; right? People that just like—they don't care what they have to do for work, they live out of their truck, and they climb all the time. Andy was one of those guys, and he was amazing. So, I went out with Andy, and we shot one day, and you know, I scanned pictures. I’m sure I gave him a 13 by 19; he sent the digital scans I had to a magazine, and I got a phone call and they bought a cover. I was just blown away. I was like, "This is amazing! I can't believe this is going really well."

Well, about two months after I met Andy, and I stayed in touch. We were really excited about the whole cover thing, and about two months later, he called me and he said, "Hey man, I'm going to southwest Utah to this amazing crack. It's a place people have kind of forgotten about; it's called the Cathedral, and it's this gigantic amphitheater. You got to take a week off work; come down, we'll shoot photos, it'll be a lot of fun." So I was like, "I'm in!"

So I showed up, and I see this big gigantic arch. Up to this point, the climbing photos I was shooting there—I wasn't on a rope; I was finding places I could hike up to in little clever ways, like leaning over rock, whatever I had to do. So, I was still kind of traumatized from the accident. I show up and there's this rope hanging down the center of the amphitheater, and he's like, "Yeah man, here it is!" And I hung that rope for you. I was just like, "Oh yeah?" And he's like, "I've got these little rope ascenders; I'll show you how to use them. You can climb up, you know? You can go up the rope; you'll be right where the action is."

Well, I'd come this far—you know, it was like a 10-hour drive, and I wanted the photos right. It did look incredible, and I knew you got to be where the shots are, right? And so I just sort of like sacked up and went up and got in position, and he was right; it was right where he needed to be. It was incredible watching Andy, just such amazement. I mean, look at these holds on the steep climbing. For the better part, like for seven days, we shot pictures, and I just bought my first digital camera at that point, so at the end of the day, we were downloading them and looking at them and getting excited. So, this picture here on the left, it's actually the same move on the right. We shot this picture on the left one day, and that night we're looking at it and he's like, "What if you went higher?" We started formulating plans, and it was like, "Wow, this is kind of the power of digital and seeing things right away."

So we went and we had this fantastic week shooting at this really, really incredible place. At the end of it, I left Andy with a bunch of low-res files, and he sent them out to his sponsors and magazines, and I got another cover story, and I sold an ad. I was just like, "This is amazing!" And so, through Andy, I started meeting other people, and this domino effect happened. This was all in 2004, and throughout the rest of 2004, I started meeting new people because Colorado is full of rock climbers, and I started getting into this really fun community. I started meeting people; they had sponsors, they were really good, and I started submitting pictures, and things started getting published.

There were just so many great characters. This is my friend Chuck. I met Chuck; we went on a trip together, and they had connections at these magazines I was starting to get them, but they were kind of like slightly known entities. Throughout that whole year, just going out and shooting and sending stuff in, it was great.

So, at the end of the year, it was actually around November of 2004, I got a phone call from my boss and he said, "You know, we're all getting laid off. Basically, the entire team." He explained that we were all going to get a severance package, and it was kind of a hard thing. I remember there were people, you know, they had much more responsibility than me with like families, and it was a tough phone call. But he mentioned severance package, and I was like, "How much?" He explained it was like four months' pay or something, and if you sign something, they give you a little extra. I was like, "Yeah, I'm in!"

The cool thing about Hewlett-Packard was, it was a great place to work. I really enjoyed it. But all of a sudden, I just had this really great year, and I was having so much fun. I said, "This is my opportunity. I'm going to take this money and I'm going to make it work!" I had just bought a house probably five months before, so I had responsibility in my life. I looked at the money; it was the first time I looked at money, and I was like, "This is time." I did the math, and I thought it was maybe like $220,000 or something. You know, I just looked at it as a roadmap; I’ve got this much time, I've got to pay my bills, and I got in my car and I was like, "I'm going wherever the climbers are!"

So in the wintertime, you know, that January 1st was when I got the layoff—that was the official date; we got two months’ notice, and then I left. So on January 1, I went to southwest Utah because that's where everybody's going. I moved in with this guy. Okay, this is Joe Haynes; we called him Kentucky Joe. He and his wife, they property managed like an apartment complex. A lot of climbers would go stay there; this was in Mesquite, Nevada, and it's a really slow time of year in Mesquite, Nevada, in the wintertime. They had all these extra rooms, and they would just let us stay for free. Free internet, free place to stay—so all the dirtbags would just go and stay at Kentucky Joe's, and he was as crazy as he looked!

Right? Like, he would hunt squirrels, and he would can stew, and he'd bring the stew to the crag. He was just a crazy person, but he was salt of the earth, man. He had great stories, and you either loved him or hated him, right? He was either a total pariah, or I was like, "I like this guy." I connected with Joe because he's a little crazy, and I knew a lot of crazy people growing up. With all the dirtbags in one area, it was so much fun, right? We were all more or less unemployed.

I was lucky I got an assignment pretty quickly. My first assignment—up to this point, everything I was shooting was on spec, which means I would shoot it, send it in, hope for the best. Well, I got a phone call from Climbing magazine, and they said, "We want to do a profile on Andy Rother." So this is Andy here. For like a month, we went out every day and we shot pictures, and one day we had like a really bad—it was like three days of bad weather actually. During that time, I said, "We should go out and shoot a portrait," because all the skateboard magazines I grew up reading, there was always a portrait of the guy. We should try and do that for Climbing magazine.

So we went out to the desert where there was all this like junk and garbage, and we started shooting these like silly portraits, right? We started like coming up with all these different scenarios and like shooting all these weird things and finding stuff, and we were just like laughing, taking these pictures, and these pictures became quite important to me, but I'll get to that in a minute.

So we had all this fun shooting them, right? Sent in the ones that worked, and we ran the story and everything, and it was great. I kept meeting new people that were down in the area, and I just started shooting with them and sending pictures in all the time. For that whole year, 2005, it was like 2004, but this time I was off the leash. I had these financial whips kind of cracking behind me because I had this mortgage that I was not even at the house anymore, and I was just like, you know, I had to make it work.

Hustling, and it was one of the most fun, carefree years of my life, going around with climbers to places I'd never been—crack to crack to crack stories—camping. It was so much fun; it was the best year of my life, maybe. So at the end of 2005, things had gone well, and in my heart of hearts, I was like, "I just got to do whatever I can to make this happen, keep going."

So I had a friend; his name is Dave Black. He's an incredible photographer, kind of a legend, and I was lucky enough to befriend Dave in 2005, and he was always someone I could lean on for advice. He called me at the beginning of 2006 and he said, "Hey, I just got off the phone with a friend of mine at The New York Times, and he has a story he wants to do in Ouray, Colorado. It's about ice climbing, and I recommended you. Do you want to do the job?" I was like, "Man, absolutely! Paid work, like yes!"

He's like, "Cool! Well, expect a call. Man, the guy's name is Brad Smith." So about an hour later, on my little flip phone, it says—the caller ID says 111111; it's all ones. This was really weird. I was like, "This is either a collection agency or it's Brad. I'm taking it!" You know? So, I took the call, and it's Brad Smith from The New York Times.

“How's it going?” I said. He said, “Hey, I just got the phone with Dave, and he told me that you were interested in doing this story. I looked at your website, and luckily I had a website way back then because that's what I did for Hewlett-Packard, so I was a little ahead of the curve. I had a little online portfolio. He said, "I looked at your website, and I like your work. I see a lot of climbing photos out there. I want to do an ice climbing story. Do you shoot ice climbing?"

I was like, "Yeah, of course, I shoot—I climb; no problem, of course!" And he's like, "Alright, cool man. Dave says you're good." He said, "Okay, so the story is about Ouray, Colorado. It's a small mountain town, and it's a mountain town that doesn't have a ski resort. But what they do have is they have this box canyon that winds through the town, and they've got hoses that they've lined along the entire top of it, and they spray water down at night. It builds up ice formations, and it's the only ice park in the world, you know?"

"What I'm interested in is that this little ice park brings in about $5 million of additional revenue to the town every winter, so it's a really great economic stimulus, so I think there's a really cool story there." I was like, "Cool, so he sent me a bunch of pictures of, you know, things he wanted to see." He said, "The week I'm going to send you down at the very end of it, they do like an international climbing competition, so there will be a lot of people there to take pictures of, but I'm not really interested in the competition. I'm more interested in the economics of this place, but you'll have plenty of people to work with."

I'm like, "Great! I'm on my way!" So I went down, and as soon as I showed up, it was really a special place, and I was kind of blown away. One of the pictures Brad had sent was, "I want you to go down; I want you to shoot straight up. I want to see what it looks like looking out of the canyon." So I get down there; I know how to rappel. I get down; I have no crampons on and I'm slipping around the ice; I'm like, "Whoa, this is crazy!"

I get down to the bottom, and thank God I had a helmet, as I just had befriended some stranger who was getting ready to go down, and I asked him if I could shoot his photo. As soon as he starts rappelling down on top of me, he knocks like all this ice down. I get hit in the neck, and I'm just like, "Oh my God! This is definitely not like rock climbing!" I'm slipping around; I don't know what I'm doing. So I take the pictures, and at the end of the day, I had to transmit all my pictures to Brad, and I'd never worked for a newspaper in my life!

At the end of the day, I have to send in my selects, and then he's going to call and give me feedback. So, the end of the day, 111111 Brad Smith. "Hey man, love the pictures! This worked. Tomorrow, I want to see how people commute, how do they get through the ice parks?" I'd go spend the day clack, clack, clack, shooting the way people kind of move around, walking across ladders. Send the pictures in, get a phone call that night, get my marching orders for the next day.

"Alright, I want you to shoot details. It's kind of a barbaric sport; I want to see what it looks like when they kick the ice and hit the ice with the ax." No problem! Super engaged editor; I'd never had an experience like this, and so I'm going and getting them the shots, getting the phone call that night, all the ones—get my marching orders for the next day. So, this is the final day; this is on Friday.

So I go out, and he says, "I want big landscape shots of climbers. I just want to see them alone on these blue curtains of ice." So I go out, and the whole day that's what I focus on. So I transmit my pictures, and then that night, it’s the last day of the shoot—calls me up, “What's up, Brad?” At this point, we're like pretty good friends. He says, "Hey man, just got the shots. Really happy with the photos. You did a really good job this week, and I got some good news."

So we're going to—my editor said, "We can run a full-color section in this; you know the whole sports section. We're going to give you two pages of color." He's like, "Which is a big deal! We don't do a lot of color in the paper." I'm like, "Cool!" And he said, "And I've got even better news; we're going to run one of the pictures on the front page." I didn't really realize the gravity of this; I was like, "That's great, man! Yeah, I'm so glad you like the photos and I'd love to do another job with you!"

Because I, I'm like, "I need to work, man." And he's like, "Yeah, no totally! It was such a good job, and congratulations man! Front page!" I was like, "Yeah, I'm super excited man! That's great! And I've got all kinds of ideas, so like, I don't know, I can just email them to you." So, for the third time, he’s like, “Keith, you got in the front page man!” And so now, I'm like, “Well, he’s kind of making a big deal about this; I should show some gratitude.”

I was like, "Yeah, I'm just—man, I'm so honored! You know, it's fantastic!" And he's laughing on the other end of the line, right? This is like New Yorker guy, and he’s clearly like, "Look at this like greenhorn! This guy doesn't know what he's doing!" And so he says to me, he says, “Keith, do you know what the circulation of The New York Times is internationally?”

I said, "Man, Brad, I'll be honest, you know, I've seen it in Starbucks and Barnes & Noble and I'm sure you can get it anywhere in New York, but I have no idea." And he's laughing; I'm sure I'm on speaker-phone at this point, and he's laughing, and he tells me the number—and it was huge! 50 million! It was gigantic internationally! I'm like, "Oh my God! That's crazy!"

And so he says, "Man, great job; you should go get a drink on me! You know, build me for it!" And also, I want you to stay on tomorrow and give me an extra day. I'm like, "Fantastic!" So I go over, and this is the first time I got to hire an assistant. I brought like a friend of mine, so I ran over to my friend and I told him the good news, of course, pretending like I knew that that was a big deal, like "Front page, man!"

So we went, we had a drink, and the next day we went out and we shot like the pickup day. I remember walking into the park, and people had The New York Times—they were looking at it and talking about it. You know, I didn’t know who was in it. I didn't know; who am I going to tell? I didn't even know The New York Times! This is some newspaper job; I don't know what I'm doing!

So I'm thinking like, "Wow, they even get it here, like The New York Times?" So, we finish up the shoot, and it was amazing, right? So like a week later, I get a phone call from this agency in Breckenridge, Colorado, and they said, "Keith, we saw your photos in The New York Times. We really loved them. They said, 'Do you shoot snowboarding?'"

And I was like, "Yeah, of course, I shoot snowboarding! Like, what do you need?" And they said, "Well, we're doing an advertorial, which is a word I’d never heard of." They said, "We're going to have the art director call you; we'll call. She'll call you in an hour." I was like, "Great!" So I get a phone call in an hour; it’s from this girl Leslie, and she said, "Hey, I'm really excited to work with you! I love your—you know, I looked at your website; I saw the pictures that you shot for The New York Times."

And she said, "The story we're doing, she’s like, ‘It’s an advertorial, which means that we’re getting a bunch of products from different companies. We're going to go out, and we're going to shoot kind of like people getting ready to go snowboarding, and they’re going to be carrying all this equipment with them and walking around with it. And it's going to run in numerous magazines; kind of like an ad, but it reads like a story.'" I was like, "Great!" And she’s like, "Do you have any portrait work?"

All I had was like the crazy portraits of like the guys throwing the bike and the fake weights and all that other stuff! And I was like, "Yeah, I do." She said, "I'll just send it over; I just want to see it." I was like, "So I emailed her that; it's all I had."

So she calls back in like 20 minutes, and she’s just dying laughing, right? She’s just like, "I can't believe you sent that!" You know, she said it in a way like I was kind of holding back on like my really good portraits, and I, as a laugh, I sent her that! And I was like, "But I got the job!" You know? And so we went out, and like for three days, we just shot people like getting ready to go have fun! We never went and had fun; we just basically shot it all!

And it was all new to me, and we went and we did this story, and it turned out great, and it was a new connection! All of a sudden, I had this new client that was also local, which was great. So about two weeks later, I got a phone call from this company in Canada, and they said, "Hey, we saw your New York Times story." And I'm like, "What? Canada?" You know? So they said, "We’ve got a catalog coming up; we know you shoot rock climbing."

And we got to shoot a lot of clothing as well; you know, do you shoot catalogs? And of course, I'm like, "Of course I shoot catalogs!" You know? And they asked me what my rate was; I didn’t know what that meant, you know? But I’d read somewhere that if someone asks you what your rate is, you always ask like, "What’s your budget?" You know, you basically just like deflect the question. So I poorly negotiated some kind of rate, and I drove down to Las Vegas, and we shot this catalog.

And again, I found myself taking pictures of people getting ready to go have fun, you know? But we never really got to have the fun, but it was a whole new experience. So a couple of months after that, my friend Chuck Fryberger, who I talked about earlier, he was a budding filmmaker, and he called me up and he said, "Hey man, I'm going to South Africa this summer, and I want to make a film. I'm going to go for ten weeks, and I want you to come along as a photographer."

“I've already talked to a couple of magazines; I've got a bunch of sponsors on board. People want photos. Do you want to come?” I was like, "Oh my God! Of course, I want to come! Yeah, I don't have to drive there if one!" Which is amazing; that’s all I'm doing these days! And I've never been to South Africa!

So May comes along, we packed—like I packed everything I had. I was still shooting film cameras as well as digital cameras. Overloaded the car, and off we went to South Africa. One of the first things we did was, as we were—you know, where we were staying, we kept seeing advertisements for this like safari that was in the area. We're like, "We're in Africa, man! We have to go on safari!"

So we drove down; I think it was called like the Boan Box Safari Camp. We went down, and it was really tacky; it felt kind of weird. There were like fences everywhere, and it looked more like acreage, and there were animals roaming around. We went into the entrance, and we paid like our $10 or whatever. The first thing the guy says to us is, "Hey, you know what? I have a young lion that if you guys—” because we were telling him how excited we were to be there— “he’s like, if you want to go into the pen, you can pet her."

And I'm the first guy like, "Let's for sure we want to do that! Like yes!" Oh, wait; let me go back because this video just plays. So this is the video of what happened. Daniel, I'm so scared right now! Keith just got clawed at; it's like a big kitty cat that has claws that will kill you! See? Take half a step left! Well, never mind; just like a—oh my God! I saw that one coming! Did you get that?

Yeah, so of course, this is the shot right before the animal jumped on me. But the worst part about it is all my friends just laughing, right? Like, a lion just jumped on me, and I was laughing too! If you really listen to the clip, that's my reaction to death; it was like laughter, right?

But so, anyway, the trip started, right? And it was the most fun ten weeks! Oh, so fun, carefree, a motivated group! Every day someone was out doing some really cool rock climb, and I got to just go along and take pictures! It didn't matter what time of day! "There's a full moon tomorrow night; we should go out!" It was just motivation, motivation—my friend Andy Rother, and all the people I’d been hanging out with for like the previous year and a half.

And it was just so much fun! I got to shoot landscapes every morning; I would get up early, and South Africa, to this day, it's probably my favorite country. I absolutely love it! It's an incredible place, and I fell in love with bird photography! There are amazing animals down there, and even the animals try to break into your car and stuff! It’s a crazy place, right?

At the end of the trip, we actually did this great white shark breaching trip. This shark right here—it's actually—you can see there’s a little fishing line here. They would float like a decoy seal behind the boat early in the morning. Once the sharks kind of wake up, it's really basically dependent on seals. There's an island called Seal Island; there's like 30,000 seals. Once the sun comes up, they go out to the sea to basically eat, and we saw like this happened six times, but with real, real seals!

This right here is just the decoy seal. It was an amazing experience! Africa is so cool! So, it was a trip that left a real impression in my life, and I started thinking like, “I want to do big expeditions; I want to see more of the world!” Like, there's just so much out there to see.

About four years ago, I was having a drink with a friend of mine, Lucas Gilman, and he said this while we were talking: "Man, friendships with athletes is the red carpet to seeing the world." And it's really true, and I would even extend that and just say your friendships in general, even with the people you work with—the magazine side and the advertising side—all of it, these friendships—they become your best friends, right? Especially with the athletes that you're traveling with because, you know, who better to travel the world with than the people you love the most?

'Cause things happen, or like getting lost in a country you've never been in before, and you know, climbing a big mountain and going on a cool expedition with cool people? You know, these are experiences you want to do with people you love. You see, it’s such a fun life of exploration, and it’s all made only better with people that are equally passionate about doing it as well.

As the years rolled on, I continued to work heavily in the editorial world with the different climbing magazines and go see different places. It was so much fun! The goofy portraits I started out shooting early on turned into a column for Rock and Ice magazine, which is my favorite climbing magazine.

For four years, I shot just illustrated portraits of the different, you know, colorful people in the climbing community, and got to meet so many fun people and hear their stories. In 2010, something happened in photography that really changed things, and it was all of a sudden you could do video in your still camera. It sent ripples through the photography community in a lot of ways because there was, in a lot of ways, nervousness because there were people writing like on online blogs and different places that like video is going to replace photography in the future. It'll just be directors, and people will pull still frames when they need photos.

I'm reading all this like, "Wow, this is crazy! I need to like learn how to shoot video!" And it was all like— it was all nonsense because they’re two completely different things, which I'll show here in just a second. But I completely jumped on the bandwagon, and I quickly fell in love. Shooting video is a lot of fun; it's a new way to tell a story, and it's a completely different creative process.

And that's the one thing I found out within probably the first couple months of playing with it. When you're shooting a photo, a photo is about like an isolated moment; something that when things come together is interesting. Like we've all seen pictures where like somebody's eyes are blinking or they're making a stupid face, and you're just like, "It's a bad photo!" But if someone looks good, you're like, "Oh, that's a fine photo!"

Right? It's the same in video; you want to capture a sequence of events. In photography, you want to capture a moment, right, action. So this picture here isn't the best surfing photo, but it's at least interesting to look at, right? You got this guy; he's grabbing a surfboard; he’s kind of making this carve move. When I shot this photo, I was also rolling video on a tripod next to me.

Now watch the video clip; it's pretty uneventful, right? The waves aren't that good. Basically, what this guy was doing, he was—we were doing this ad shoot, and he was getting towed in, and he was doing like tricks off of these waves. He was meant to just like blast and do tricks. Well, he came in a little late, so he just kind of carved out of it.

But I shot a photo at the same time, ‘cause I’m just rolling on like a locked-off video tripod. So when you see it coupled with the photo, again, the video clip is nothing, but there’s still like a little moment in there, and that's what photography is all about, right? It’s finding that moment, and video is all about finding a sequence that makes sense—a clip that you can cut to and tell a better narrative story with later.

So there were these good lessons to learn early on, and I got really into video. It became the new editorial, you know? Instead of going out and shooting a story for a climbing magazine, it was like, "Let's go make a film!" And it slowly learned—it sort of turned into doing bigger expeditions.