I once met a pithy fellow who quipped, "I've never heard of someone who wanted to become a climbing photographer and who didn't 'make it.'" I suppose he meant to say that climbing photography is easy and that anyone can do it. I disagree. Shooting a picture that's in focus and well lit of a person climbing a rock is no big deal, true. But shooting a picture that captures the essence of climbing -- be it the energy of a hard climb, the intimacy of a climber with stone, the natural beauty of the places and features we climb, the scale of many larger climbing objectives, or what have you -- is no simple task. It's a one-in-a-hundred type of thing. Or even one-in-a-thousand. You have to be in the right place at the right time, know your equipment, and have a good eye. I know this from experience. I have many, many poor photographs.

I only mention all this because I just dropped a couple bills on a new piece of glass for my Nikon. Whenever I buy a new piece of creative equipment I think incessantly of all the cool things I will/can create with it. When I think about taking pictures or shooting video, especially where climbing is concerned, I think about how to get into position to take interesting photographs. That's I how I stumbled upon this link -- atlasdevices.com. The Atlas Ascender seems to be only for military use at the moment, but can you imagine how much easier it would be to zip up and down a static line while shooting a climber on route with one of these things? It's s00kreamy, to say the least.

Hence, I brand it with the first ever s00kreem stamp of approval.