The Stories Behind the Shots: Vol. 2

Nov 22

Four Images Forged in the World’s Wildest Places

The stories behind four images from our Wall Art Print collection — each captured in remote corners of the world where weather, altitude, terrain, and timing converge into something unforgettable. During our 2025 Bring the Adventure Home Sale, every print featured here — and every print in our gallery — is 35% off. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to bring adventure indoors, this may be it.

WHERE THE EXTRAORDINARY REVEALS ITSELF

In wild places, the extraordinary rarely announces its arrival. It emerges quietly — in a break in the clouds, a shift in wind, a momentary window of clarity on a high ridge or glaciated face.

These four images — Himalayan Ember, Into the Abyss, Lhotse Couloir, and Devil’s Thumb First Descent — were born in such moments. They are testaments to endurance, creativity, and the rare alignment of opportunity and preparation that defines adventure photography. They are not simply pictures; they are fragments of lived experience, shaped by risk, resolve, and the hard-earned privilege of being in these places at all.

HIMALAYAN EMBER

In the thin air of Everest Base Camp, at nearly 17,000 feet, even the simplest tasks become labors of effort. But in 2025, during Fisher Creative’s spring Everest expedition filming a forthcoming documentary for a major global streaming platform, the team had a rare advantage: the ability to fly drones higher than most people have ever attempted on the mountain.

With official drone permits from the Nepalese government and custom firmware that unlocked ascent to summit altitude, Scott Rogers pushed the drones far beyond their ordinary limits. At that altitude, every second of battery life matters for batteries draining twice as fast. The drone’s motors strained in oxygen-starved air. Custom high-pitch props cut through gusting winds and fought icing. But technology was only half the challenge. Everest has its own rules.

Each evening, the team waited for the smallest window: a moment of calm skies, low winds, and clean airspace. When that window opened, the drones launched. The team hauled over 80 Mavic batteries to base camp — an absurd, heavy, absolutely necessary amount of lithium — just to buy a few precious minutes of flight time.

What you see here is a massive 80-frame panorama, meticulously stitched together in Adobe Lightroom. The sun ignites the highest peaks on Earth in warm alpine gold, the clouds swirl below like a living sea, and Everest rises above it all with impossible calm.

Scott’s reflection says it all: “It’s a lot of hard work filming on Everest, but glimpses like this made the hard parts of the project that much more enjoyable.”

INTO THE ABYSS

Some expeditions test skill. Others test patience. This one tested everything. In 2013, the Myanmar–American Friendship Expedition set out to attempt the first ascent of Gamlang Razi — a remote, unmapped peak in the northern jungles of Myanmar. Before even setting eyes on the mountain, team members spent over a month trekking more than 175 miles through dense, leech-infested jungle, remote villages, and terrain so unforgiving that even finding food was uncertain.

Some villagers hadn’t seen a westerner in over 15 years. Most had never seen one at all. There were no maps, no GPS, no established route, and only the vaguest rumors and information about the mountain they were chasing.

When the team finally reached the base of Gamlang Razi, the mountain felt mythical with fresh snow blanketing its upper flanks. On summit day, Molly Loomis descended a steep, untracked face under a perfect cut of light. Eric Daft raised his camera, capturing a moment that holds everything: exhaustion, resilience, clarity, and the unspoken knowledge that this was an experience few would ever understand.

Into the Abyss is a portrait of pure expedition reality — harsh, beautiful, and undeniable.

Get the whole story behind the expedition in our film Myanmar: Bridges to Change.

LHOTSE COULOIR

On Everest’s Southeast Ridge, just after summiting for the first time while filming a CNN documentary with Ben Fogle and Victoria Pendleton, Mark Fisher paused. The wind dropped. The light aligned. And across the Lhotse Face before him stood one of the world’s most coveted, intimidating ski lines — the Lhotse Couloir, a narrow, perfect chute slicing down the world’s fourth-highest peak.

At the time, the line had never been skied. Its 2,000-foot chute, flanked by towering rock walls, represented one of ski mountaineering’s great unrealized visions. But Mark knew something few did: professional ski mountaineers Hilaree Nelson and Jim Morrison were quietly preparing to attempt it that autumn.

Through drifting clouds and razor-thin air, Mark framed the couloir with the face illuminated in delicate, angled light, the ridge lines etched like bone. It’s a portrait not just of terrain, but of possibility.

A few months later, Hilaree and Jim would carve their names into history with the first ski descent of the line. But this shot holds the feeling before — when possibility still hovered like a whisper above the summit.

It’s the story of a dream-line becoming real.

DEVIL’S THUMB FIRST DESCENT

Some mountains don’t just command attention — they demand respect. The Devil’s Thumb, rising sharply along the rugged Alaska–British Columbia border, is one of the most intimidating peaks in Southeast Alaska: steep, icy, exposed, and notoriously dangerous but legendary among big-mountain athletes.

In 2010, while working on the film Light the Wick with Teton Gravity Research, the team spent nearly six weeks pinned down by relentless rain and almost no flyable weather. The days stretched on, the storms intensified, and hope thinned as they waited for a mountain that wasn’t ready.

Until one day, it was.

Ian McIntosh — one of the strongest big-mountain skiers in the world — dropped into an exposed line on the Devil’s Thumb that had never been skied. One mistake would have meant catastrophic consequence. Instead, Ian descended with grace, precision, and absolute composure.

Mark captured the moment from below, watching one of the world’s best athletes move with artistry on a face designed to punish hesitation. It’s a frame charged with energy — the kind that comes from history being written in real time.

BRING THE ADVENTURE HOME — AND TAKE 35% OFF EVERY PRINT

These four images remind us that adventure photography isn’t just about witnessing the extraordinary — it’s about enduring the journey required to reach it. The cold, the storms, the altitude, the fear, the perseverance, the split-second instinct behind the lens — it all lives inside these moments.

Now, during the 2025 Bring the Adventure Home Sale, you can bring any of these prints — and dozens more — into your home at 35% off. Whether you crave a reminder of high places, a window into the unknown, or a piece of the world that inspires you, this is the perfect time to choose a print that speaks to you. The sale goes through December 3, 2025.

Explore the full gallery and check out The Stories Behind the Shots: Vol. 1, featuring four more images from expeditions across the globe.