Organic Climber goes to Shelf Road

Still been posting stuff on The OrganicClimber.com you guys should check it out. I was recently out at Shelf Road in Colorado and took some pretty sick photos. You can check them out on my latest post, but here are a couple to wet your whistle.



Although I haven't been shooting many assignments lately, I am considering getting back into some sports photography this fall, and possibly shoot some weddings in the spring. That is still TBD, but I will be sure to start posting stuff here again if I begin shooting. But for now I just shoot at my own leisure.

The Organic Climber

Well, since I haven't really been posting here I figured I would point you to my new blog. The Organic Climber. I am giving it a go at creating sort of a catch all blog. I will be blogging about three of my passions: Climbing, RAW Foods, healthy living and sharing my photography within those posts at times. The new blog will be updated far more frequently than this one. I hope you enjoy the new blog.

Robbers Cave Oklahoma

I spent last weekend in Oklahoma climbing the sandstone and ironite cliffs of Robbers Cave. These beautiful cliffs are composed of hard sandstone with ironite plates covering random sections of rock. It's some of the strangest rock I have seen, but it's gorgeous. Despite this being mostly a top rope crag I love going here. There is excellent bouldering and a hand full of routes you can lead that take good gear. Despite getting rained on most of Saturday the sun came out on Sunday and provided us with a gorgeous day!

The climb pictured here is The Vein (5.9). This route is one of my favorite climbs of all-time.

Solo

Gary Ballard climbs Solo (5.8) at Enchanted Rock State Park.



Well, I must be honest, lately there has not been much content on my blog because I have not been shooting much these days. Part of it has been lack of inspiration, another part of it has been that it seems doors keep getting shut on me when it comes to pursuing my photography passion full time. I have shot many professional assignments and been published an many magazines and newspapers, (including ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, The Denton Record-Chronicle and numerous college sports annuals) but the pieces have yet to fall into place to turn this into a full time career.

At the ripe old age of 30 I am left trying to decide how much time do I want to invest in pursuing this? Should I continue pursuing it as a source of income or just purely for the art and enjoyment of it, which is what drew me to photography to begin with. The work that goes into running your own photography business is very taxing and performing those tasks on top of a full time job and being active in the lives of people around you takes even a higher toll.

I am sure I will remain involved in photography to some degree, but the question is, "how much, and how often." I am currently working on updating my portfolio and revamping my website CalebSimpson.com. I hope to have that up and running within the next few months. My first priority is to update my wedding portfolio for a contract client so I can start pulling in more jobs through them. Following that will be my sports, climbing and photojournalism portfolios. It will be a long process, but hopefully with the help of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom I will be able to finish quicker than with my old work flow process.

Baldy Peak

I spent last weekend with the Texas Mountaineers at Quartz Mountain, where I gained my first multi pitch trad experience. We climbed six pitches total that day, reaching a summit twice. The intention of the trip wasn't to get photos, but I always make an effort get bring it out at least a little bit. I often get so into the climbing that I don't take enough photos, but my plans for the second day didn't work out as planned so I ended up on the ground shooting several photos. The trip was great and the weather was amazing. So, here are a few photos from the trip, a few of them will be going into my stock collection.


A view of the night sky from the parking lot of our campground. I attempted to get some longer exposures, but I walked away from the camera since I was using a remote, but the signal was lost shortly after walking away so this is the best star trail shot I got.


Quartz Mountain as seen from the road approaching the climbing area. The peak is also known as Baldy Peak and randomly juts out of the ground in the middle of flat farm land in Oklahoma. It's an amazing site to see from the top of the peak.


This is a couple in our group climbing Snakes Head (5.5x). This was the third pitch of the climb, we also climbed this line. It was a fairly easy climb, and a lot of fun. There was very little protection on this route, but as a second I didn't have to worry about it much.


This is what I am calling the crux of the entire three pitch line. It is more of a mental game than anything. You had to leap across to the boulder to scramble up some more slab to the rappel anchors.


Mike (who's last name I forget) free solos Desire (5.10b). What is even more amazing is Mike doesn't have fingers on his left hand. He also down climbed every route he sent, except for the one pictures here, because of the bulge he climbed down a route to the left.


I think this route is Amazon Woman, it goes at around 5.10. I think this pair of climbers is also with the Texas Mountaineers.


Self portrait from the summit of Baldy Peak.

Although my intention for this blog is to display professional work along with a few personal work posts (like this one), I may end up writing a trip report from this adventure and post it here. I have yet to write a trip report about any of my climbing adventures, but seeing as how this was a completely new and different experience, I just might share it with the world!

I bet that hurt

Last weekend I shot the North Texas vs Navy game at Fouts Field in Denton, Texas. The game was high scoring, which wore me out because I was constantly running up and down the sideline. After I went through my images for a second time I discovered this jewel. Can you say "ouch".

I was pushing this photo to Sports Illustrated for a two page spread, but unfortunately it likely won't get picked up because the photo doesn't really fit the format for the spread. Hopefully the image will still get picked up elsewhere.


North Texas Mean Green defensive back (13) Kartey Agbottah and (35) Antoine Bush bring down Navy Midshipmen slot back (7) Reggie Campbell during the the second quarter at Fouts Field. Navy defeated North Texas 74-62.
Caleb Simpson-US PRESSWIRE

This weekend I will be headed out to Quartz Mountain in Oklahoma. I will be roped up most of the day learning trad, but hopefully I will come away with some good images too. The Leonid Meteor Shower is also this weekend, so being away from the city lights should provide me an opportunity to get some good photos of that.