Unplugged #9: Back from the Alps, rewilding's human cost, and a death knell for critical thinking

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I'm back from the Alps with more than 2,000 digital photos to cull, process and file. This may take some time...

Last week, snowshoe trekking in the Stubai Alps of Austria, was an absolute blast. I joined up with a motley group of Austrian Alpine Club members and, guided by the capable Iain Mackay, we learned all about avalanche safety (using a transceiver and probe) before heading off into the mountains.

We saw a range of conditions. After touching down in Innsbruck to find shirtsleeve weather and surprisingly little visible snow I worried the turbothaw had followed me from Scotland, but snow cover up high proved impressive – at least by the standards I'm used to. Snowshoes were required from hut to hut. Sometimes the terrain was surprisingly technical, and we pushed snowshoes pretty much as far as they can go in the mountains.

One thing that surprised me was that we didn't see anyone else on snowshoes. Plenty of ski tourers, as expected, but it seems that snowshoe hut trekking is less common in the Alps than I had assumed. This was backed up by observations from other members of the group.

As a photographer, I was in heaven. So many opportunities for landscape images! And, of course, I was working hard photographing the human story of the trip too. It's early days yet, as I'm currently looking at over 2,000 raw files starting back at me in Lightroom, but I've seen enough to be pretty happy with the image selection I managed to come back with.

Something I've written about before is how digital is free, so it encourages a machine gun approach. This comes with pros and cons. On the plus side, it can be a real advantage in fast-paced shooting situations with groups of people. It's great to have three or four frames to choose from in post! If you're shooting film and only have one shot instead of four, there's a chance someone's eyes may be closed, or they might be making a goofy expression, or the subject might be slightly out of focus.

It's just a fact that digital leads to a better hit rate with this kind of photography. Besides, have you ever looked at Henri Cartier-Bresson's contact sheets? The whole thing about a single 'decisive moment' was always a myth. Good photography has always been about selection both before and after the shutter is fired.

However, it's also a fact that (for me) digital tends to lead to a lower hit rate in other kinds of photography. I'll take five shots of the same landscape and none will be quite so well considered as a single 6x9 frame of 120 film I might have taken at the same spot. Think twice, shoot once I suppose.

Anyway, the end results will be much the same – and I plan to whittle down my big pile of raw files to no more than about 4–500 keepers.

What an adventure. Keep eyes peeled for more on this – the story is due to be published in a future issue of TGO magazine (deadline some months out yet, so it'll be a while, but I'll let you know).

Oh, and I also came back from the Alps with Alpine hut disease / flu / possible Covid, so am now in the process of losing my voice – and have regrettably had to cancel a planned multi-day trip into the Cairngorms with a visiting friend. I seem to get ill after every time I travel internationally at the moment, so from now on I might as well start scheduling in a sick week after every trip...

Recently published

Issue #44 of Like the Wind is out now! This one's a cracker – and it includes a piece I'm particularly pleased with: 'NYC 26.2 @35mm', my interview with Brazilian film photographer Thiago Ribeiro. One of his images, shot on Ilford HP5+, appears on the front cover. Thiago wrote about it on Instagram: 'I won't pretend this isn't huge.'

Winter Colour – my latest article for On Landscape magazine is available now (paywall), taking a philosophical look at photography's role in an increasingly machine-dominated world. From the piece: 'The existence of AI-generated fake photography has crystallised my views on all this. In AI mimicry, we see content without communication and media without emotion – imagery, in other words, robbed of human experience. Experience is what makes us human; what makes us conscious and therefore real.'

From the archives

24th of January, 2015: Illustrations from after the Alpine golden age – some gorgeous treasures from 1892.

What I've been reading

While I was in the Alps I read Julia by Sandra Newman – a feminist retelling of George Orwell's 1984 from the perspective of Julia. It adds a lot to her character as well as the dystopian world of Ingsoc and Airstrip One, but I think it's a flawed book overall and lacks the original's dark gravitas. The ending didn't really work for me, although I'm convinced that many reviewers have totally missed the point of the ending and are taking it too literally.

I also read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. What a beautiful piece of work. Also flawed, of course – I don't think it's up there with For Whom the Bell Tolls, but it has moments of perfection. The heartbreaking inevitability of that first shark, after everything... wow.

Now that I'm back home, I'm finishing off What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami (I have the hardback edition and didn't want to carry it with me on the trail).

Books and magazines

I read the February 2025 issue of The Atlantic on the flight over to Innsbruck, and found myself really appreciating the article 'The Anti-Social Century' by Derek Thompson (there's a web version here. A standout quote:

For decades, we’ve adopted whatever technologies removed friction or increased dopamine, embracing what makes life feel easy and good in the moment. But dopamine is a chemical, not a virtue. And what’s easy is not always what’s best for us. We should ask ourselves: What would it mean to select technology based on long-term health rather than instant gratification? And if technology is hurting our community, what can we do to heal it?

I've recently come across a term, Amistics, which relates to this kind of technological selectionism. We all know people who blindly adopt whatever new technology comes along due to some vague sense of progress or keeping up with the times, or just because they're gullible enough to fall for advertising. Amistics is about rejecting this and adopting a more intentional approach.

Online stuff

what in the WORLD is happening in the outdoor industry!???? – an interesting piece for a few reasons. This stood out to me as reflecting something I've felt for a while: 'The outdoors got a huge boost during covid, and that boost hasn’t fully died out— the outdoorsy are trendy again. But the industry grew at an unprecedented rate during covid, and even if a lot of the individual people interested in the outdoors stay interested, the growth rate is slowing down. [...] Everyone bought all their outdoor toys at the beginning of the pandemic; money is tight right now for a lot of people and demand was already low for a lot of outdoor gear. [...] Marketing budgets get cut and with people reading less and less (unfortunately true) and spending more time on social media and influencer advertising often being cheaper than most traditional avenues those slimmer budgets will likely end up with smaller content creators.'

Rewilding’s Human Cost: Who Gets Left Behind When Nature Takes Over? – glad to see a more nuanced perspective gradually gain prominence in the rewilding debate, and this expresses it well. We can't exclude humans when we make more space for nature. 'The future of nature recovery isn’t about choosing between wild landscapes and working ones. It’s about finding a way for them to thrive together.'

Running on Substack: A directory of Substack newsletters devoted to running – if you like reading about running, this is a fabulous resource. I've been connecting with more runners on Substack lately so this is great to see.

Pictures & Memories from a Walk in the Uinta Mountains – Chris Townsend has found some photos from a long-distance walk many years ago.

Hefted – Ross goes for a run in the Ochils. 'My personality is interwoven in the Ochil Hills, in their tops, their curves, and their creases. Whilst I might have traded them for the lofty heights of the Swiss Alps, they are the hills that shaped me as a person, and where I will always go back to – like the swallow in summer, or the sheep let loose from the pen. They are the nexus point for who I was, who I am, and who I will be. This is what it means to know a place, to have it reflect you and reflect in you.'

Students’ use of AI spells death knell for critical thinking – '"How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?" asked the great novelist EM Forster. He meant that writing is a sophisticated form of thinking, and that learning to write well, to feel one’s way through the development of an idea or argument, is at the heart of writing. When we ask AI to write an essay, we are not simply outsourcing labour, we are outsourcing our thinking and its development, which over time will only render us more confused and less intelligent.'

That's all, folks

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