Two Camera Related Takeaways From Alaska Shoot

Recently I returned from the Kahiltna glacier in the central Alaska
Range, where I was for five weeks. Alaska is probably my favorite big
mountain range in the whole world. Alaska is uniquely situated for
amazing experiences and adventure for alpine climbers. As a visual
creator I wanted to highlight two camera related thoughts that I walked away with from this most recent shoot in Alaska.



Read the trip report here.

Shooting in these extreme elements (think cold & hot) can
be challenging (duh!). IMO backing up all assets so that they are
securely delivered is the most important. For this shoot I elected to
use a MacBook Air and LaCie mobile SSD 2TB
hard drives (2x) as my in-field archiving system. Option B was to
simply leave computer and hard drives at home and store SD cards in a
secure storage system until returning from the glacier. Ultimately, I
included the computer as a way to review video files and to cull videos
and photos in the field. This was a five week expedition, perhaps on a
seven day climbing shoot I would elect to be more nimble and agile using
a secure SD card storage system.



The FPoleV is a new tool I picked up in late winter. The micro pole extends a DSLR
or a GoPro to a distance of 16 ft. It offers some pretty unique
perspectives for shots with stable movement. I found it works really
well in skiing applications. For alpine climbing it is pretty obtrusive
and cumbersome. When collapsed it is 36” inches long so it sticks way
above the top of your climbing back pack. It is quite difficult to use
when climbing steep difficult terrain, like the “Prow” pitch on the
North Buttress of Begguya. I did test out taking the Micro FPoleV and
only using 4 sections which made it more applicable in alpine climbing
terrain. But ultimately I ended up using an old Rylo extension pole
paired with a GoPro Max. By contrast it only extended nearly 4 ft but
collapsed to about 12 inches which made it far easier to climb and shoot
in alpine terrain. I look forward to continuing to test out the Micro
FPoleV. It is a great tool to add unique angles which I am all about!