About Ian Evans
Mountaineer, Photographer and Writer
Introduction
I was born and educated in Liverpool. My interest in mountains and photography was first awakened during holidays and weekend excursions into Snowdonia which later extended to The Lake District and The Scottish Highlands. I first moved to the Highlands in 1981, and since then from homes in Fort William and Invermoriston I have been able to enjoy easy access to many of Scotland’s finest mountains.
I prefer not to follow, nor be influenced by emerging trends or fashion, so the style and content of my work is intended simply to reflect my lifetime love of mountains and of the mountain environment. My motivation is equally simple; to capture images of this environment and to share them in a manner which actively encourages the viewer to appreciate, to respect, to value and, above all, to protect this very precious, fragile and now steadily disappearing mountain wilderness.
Throughout my life my constant companions have been my cameras, with which I have attempted to capture every memorable moment as it steadily unfolded. In the early years exploring Snowdonia, The Lake District and The Scottish Highlands, my guide and mentor was W.A. Poucher. His black and white guidebooks were an inspiration to any aspirant photographer, and they provided me with a solid foundation in mountain photography, particularly composition and the changeable nature of mountain light.
The importance of light, its characteristics and qualities was further emphasised through my appreciation of the work of the late American mountaineering photographer Galen Rowell, who became the second major influence in the development of my emerging photographic skills.
Photograph : Ben Nevis in Winter Raiment, The Scottish Highlands
When the time came to extend my portfolio of work beyond Britain, I was so inspired by images in Galen’s book ‘The Throne Room of The Mountain Gods’ about K2 and the Karakoram Himalaya, and by those of climbers on Chris Bonington’s successful 1975 British Everest South West Face expedition, that my eyes became inextricably drawn towards these distant horizons.
I embarked upon my ‘Himalayan Adventure’ in 1979, and in the years that followed I established commercial relationships with several travel companies including Mountain Travel Nepal, The Ultimate Travel Company and KE Adventure Travel. For nearly 40 years, with their encouragement and support, I organised and led numerous trekking, climbing and photographic expeditions to Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sikkim, Tibet and Bhutan.
At the time they were accomplished, many of these expeditions were pioneering and required detailed research and planning. They would, in time, provide me with the opportunity to visit and to photograph some of the remotest valleys, the longest glaciers and the highest peaks of the Himalaya and Karakoram including, amongst many others, Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga.
One could be forgiven for thinking that, having committed to this major Himalayan project involving frequent trips to these distant lands, my enthusiasm for photography of the mountains of Britain would diminish. However, that has never been the case because I soon discovered that the spectrum of opportunity for both mountaineering and photography that these two very different environments presents me with is always broad, challenging and fulfilling.
Photograph : Masherbrum, Baltoro Mustagh, Karakoram Himalaya.