The Concept of Local Hero
Nige, whom I have only met once but seemed like a likely character to ‘pilot his own death star’, had a good run of form recently – ticking loads of E6′s and E7′s in good style on the grit. Adam did a great report for UKClimbing.com – Golden Feet.
The report has gone down well, and as I suspected lots of people have asked for more reports like this. A few people have mentioned that it would be a great weekly feature – a low key, unsponsored climber quietly operating at a very high standard.
I agree it would be a fantastic feature. But is it feasible? No. For two reasons:
Is there loads of people out there, doing their thing at this level? No.
Is it possible to obtain several professional quality, timely photographs of each of these non-existent local heroes on a weekly basis? No, of course not.
We are extremely lucky that A) we have awesome climbers like Nige and B) we have awesome photographers like Adam, and the simple fact that they are mates is what made this report happen.
Also, when someone is operating at Nige’s level, we do tend to hear about them for quite some time. If you follow the climbing news closely, his name is not unfamiliar: Check this UKC News Report. And this UKC News Report.
ADVERT: Go buy a photo of Adam’s right now – he once took a photo of a mushroom in Font that I thought was particularly cool, I would say that one wouldn’t be a bad choice.
What would be more feasible, but on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, would be a ‘local hero’ style feature that was more a short bio of a person instead of a up to the minute news report, with a portrait and perhaps a historical photo – which is a feature that Alpinist used to have in their magazine. I suspect they ran out of local heroes!
I dunno, I think you maybe writing this off a bit quickly. Weekly – no way. But monthly, I think there’s potential. I think the enthusiasm for this piece tapped into a bit more than hard climbing – there are climbers doing interesting stuff all over the UK, whilst I think folk are gettiong bored of seeing the same old faces in the mags all the time. The problem remains, as it did with the mags, that there isn’t the budget to go and seek these climbers out. But I think the web has more potential to give them exposure without them needing to thrust themselves into the spotlight. You should do a call for nominations, then follow them up. Plus a monkey can get photos good enough for a web report nowadays.
Adam
P.S. if you won’t go for Local Heroes, how’s about National Zeroes – sponsored but shit, a UKC expose!