Number in series 70; Year of publication 1986 - Fell and Rock ...

June Parker 131show a new route being made. It is interesting too to see the details of theclothes worn for climbing; the tweed jackets, cloth caps, nailed boots and longtrousers tucked into socks, and a little later the first 'rubbers' or cheapWoolworth's plimsolls as worn by Stanley Watson on the layback on Sepulchre.Rope technique (or sometimes almost complete lack of it) is another feature,although there are a number of photographs, probably taken towards the end ofthe period, especially to demonstrate safe climbing methods.Taking photographs then was not the simple matter that it can be today. Thecamera they used was an Underwood whole-plate camera which was basically alarge wooden box with a leather concertina bellows at one end and aperturewhich would take different lenses at the other. The whole kit with tripod and adozen unexposed glass plates weighed over twenty pounds. They used plateswith a very slow emulsion which therefore required lengthy exposures, often ofseveral seconds. Rusty Westmorland could recall being asked to hold a pose for40 seconds. All this meant a great deal of patience and co-operation fromclimbers who were often asked to balance on small holds for a long time whilemaintaining a dynamic pose. Not the easiest thing to do. It was the use of thisslow emulsion however which resulted in such good quality negatives, capableof considerable enlargement without loss of detail, and in prints which showedthe nature and texture of the rock so well.The Abrahams have been criticised for 'working over' their photographs.After many months of sorting and studying the negatives during the preparationof the catalogue, I do not think this is a valid criticism. Certainly in some casesmasking tape or paint has been applied to the negative in order to make the edgeof a rock or the outline of a climber stand out against the sky. As they preferredto take photographs in diffused lighting to avoid the contrasty effect of directsunlight, and as this would often mean a dull grey lighting, then this techniqueseems to me perfectly justifiable. In one case, a more dramatic photograph hasbeen achieved by painting out a rock buttress which filled the gap between twopinnacles. This is the picture of the 'Crazy Pinnacle' on Crib Goch and it wasabsolutely necessary to do this to show the true nature of the situation. In yetother cases, people have been painted out of the foreground, presumably toemphasise the peace and tranquility of the landscape. This must have been apersonal whim as most photographers today seem to prefer a figure in theforeground. Not many people will realise that there was someone sitting in theboat in Plate 9 in Camera on the Crags.It is true that there is a photograph taken in a quarry but with an Alpine title.As far as I know there is only one such, and I think it was probably a joke,arising from the sight of a photograph of the Needle in Chamonix bearing thetitle 'Aiguille de la Nuque'!In 1896 something happened which had an immense impact on the lives ofthe two brothers. O.G.Jones, who was in the course of writing his book RockClimbing in the English Lake District, called at the Lake Road shop and invited301 On Crazy Pinnacle, Crib Goch, with an emphasised gap. Abraham Collection