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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Copyright 18-Feb-2005 At 12:36:04 AM Onsight

Message

On 17/02/2005 anthonyk wrote:
>out of curiosity, just how big is the market in australia anyway?
Very small that’s for sure. One of the key reasons I’ve been able to make a go of it is because I get a very very large proportion of my photo income from overseas. Without that it’d be impossible.
>there
>aren't that many climbers and each doesn't spend that much on climbing
>(really), but is there much use of climbing stuff in other areas, eg general
>advertising, broader audience travel stuff etc?
There probably is a market there from time to time, and mainstream is where the money is, but I’ve personally found that market hard to tap into - perhaps due to my reluctance to give many of my images to mainstream photo libraries to market on my behalf…
>of course there's always
>the catch 22 of encouraging more people to the sport provides more opportunity
>for working within the field but potentially degrades the activity, but
>thats another story really.
An interesting philosophical point you’re touching on there! You could probably say a similar thing about guiding, or gyms, and I’m not sure how many new entrants my “work” would have encouraged into the sport, if any, but anyway don’t most of them just stay in the gyms these days? ;-P But seriously, like many climbers I don’t like to see my local crags getting overcrowded either but I don’t see it so much as a problem of numbers but of attitudes (incidentally, am I the only one who feels that climbing here is actually less popular than it was say five years ago?). And anyway, I don’t see trying to present a more positive image of the sport to the public is necessarily a bad – or degrading - thing. Nor do I see showing climbers some of the places they can go and cool climbs out there as necessarily negative. And finally, if somehow my work has encouraged more participants then I wouldn't necessarily be disappointed *provided* of course they don't stuff it up for the rest of us - and I say that because I'd be happy for others to enjoy climbing, as I have, especially as I believe it gives an opportunity to learn to 'appreciate' the outdoors (among other things) whilst giving an interesting and perhaps valuable counterpoint to our 'normal' urbanised consumer society... etc, etc.
>in the end, whats the ideal for you guys making
>much of a living off climbing?
In what sense?