"Climbing is dangerous" says a sign posted all over the place at Wild Walls, Inc, Spokane's best climbing gym. I love photographing in there, even though you are dealing with low light and a mix of about 3 or 4 different light sources.
Somedays I go in and the place will be packed. Other days I go in and the place is empty. I when in the other day and there was a few people climbing. A lot of talking between climbs. But over in the bouldering corner there was 1 girl bouldering. Bouldering is a form of climb with no rope, because it is low enough to the ground that a fall will not kill you. It normally includes short, difficult, powerful moves to complete a bouldering route.
I photographed her for awhile, and realized she was very good. She knew what she was doing and was performing some awesome and powerful acrobatic moves. Great for beautiful photographs. During one of her brief resting moments I went over and introduced myself and made sure she didn't mind being photographed, and showed her some of the images I had taken. She didn't mind...as long as I made her look good. Her name was Chelsea, and she worked at Wild Walls. She also said that she wasn't climbing that well today. "Yeah, Right?", I thought to my self. Looks pretty good to me.
Why black and white? There are a couple of reasons why I made these photos B/W. One was the lighting. Without some kind of flash, it is very dark in there. I was shooting at around 4000iso. Which made the images very grainy. I thought that the black and white made it grittier and therefore more intense and had more impact. Also, with all the different light sources, you had a lot of weird greens and yellow cast on the skin and the wall. It's just a lot easier to deal with in true monochrome.
In closing, I'd just like to say that Wild Walls is one of my favorite places to photograph in town. It is just a laid back, relaxing place. I've never met a grumpy person there. Everybody just has a good time. I'd also like to thanks Chelsea for allowing me to photograph her.
