JOHN CLEARE I was barely into my teens and already a promising artist when I started rock climbing and soon became captivated both by the game and by the mountains where it was played. Throughout my twenties I climbed regularly in the Alps and then, after a traumatic debut as a member of the 1971 International Everest Expedition, I graduated to regular expeditioning among the Greater Ranges of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Mountaineering and wilderness travel had become a way of life, individual, inspirational and deeply satisfying. But one must earn a living and photography seemed a sensible alternative to starving in a garret as a painter. After three years at photographic college and a decade freelancing in mainstream photography, handling advertising, corporate, industrial, fashion and magazine assignments, I found that the outdoors had overtaken the ordinary. I’d been instrumental in the innovative BBC climbing broadcasts of the sixties, had made several films and TV commercials featuring mountaineering, had filmed 'Eiger Sanction' for Clint Eastwood and had published my first three books. I was in the right place at the right time with the right skills and with the encouragement of several far-seeing clients was able to combine my two passions into a single specialist profession.