The photographer capturing climbers at dizzying heights

Often shot mid-ascent, Simon Carter’s images capture fellow climbers tackling some of the world’s most stunning rock formations.

When Simon Carter first laid his eyes on the “Totem Pole,” a 213-foot-tall monolith rising dramatically from the seas of eastern Tasmania, Australia, he was faced with a dilemma: “To climb or to photograph?” He did both. While the rock had been scaled before, the Australian photographer and his friends decided to find a new route — and it paid off. As Carter abseiled around the narrow, imposing sea stack with his camera, he captured the other climbers in action from thrilling vantage points unseen from the ground. The photographer’s new book, “The Art of Climbing,” features a selection of these images, alongside more than 200 other striking shots of fellow climbers ascending towering and complex rock formations around the world. “I like to talk about climbing photography being on a spectrum. On one end you’ve got a very documentary style, where you go out and document whatever it is that’s going on,” said Carter in a video interview. “And at the other end of the spectrum, you got more conceptual kind of shots, which are the ones I really love — my book’s a mixture of them, but I really love conceptual ones.” The book divides his shots into thematic chapters with names like “Flow” (featuring climbers completely absorbed in the moment) and “Lines” (showing people tackling vertical crevices and natural cracks in rock faces). The photos also range in composition and proximity to the climber.