Photographer Page

Renan Ozturk

Andy Lewis crosses a slackline high above the valley floor in Moab, Utah. Photographer Renan Ozturk dedicated this photograph to his late friend Dean Potter, who first envisioned a free-solo image like this "moon walk," captured without digital manipulation within a single frame. After missing his first chance at the shot, Ozturk writes that he “stumbled through the night, arriving tired and bloody to the moonset/sunrise location on the opposite side of the towers.”

A view from Everest North Base Camp shows the Rongbuk glaciers and the approach toward the mountain's summit.

Photographer Renan Ozturk used specially modified drones to capture Mount Everest and its surrounding peaks in 360-degree panoramas. Ozturk operated a drone from Camp I on Everest’s North Col to complete this image.

Headlamps blaze as climbers ascend the mountain from the North Col in this time-lapse image from the team’s camp. The climbers were Sherpas and other support team members carrying oxygen bottles, tents, fuel for camp stoves, and other supplies to a high camp and back, an incredible feat of endurance.

Jim Hurst, the film team’s sound engineer, races toward a group of Indian climbers who were blown off their feet by a powerful gust at the North Col. To keep them from sliding down the mountain, he plunged his ice ax into the snow to help secure the rope the climbers were dangling from. Everyone was rescued.

Blasted by hurricane-strength winds at 23,000 feet, Nick Kalisz clings to a broken tent after a harrowing storm the night before. A member of the expedition’s film team, he was later evacuated to Kathmandu to be treated for potentially life-threatening pulmonary embolisms.

Just before a storm, tents from several expeditions huddle against the snowy slope in this drone shot of the North Col camp at about 23,000 feet. But the hurricane-force winds that followed proved too strong, blasting down every tent. A couple were blown away; one was lofted hundreds of feet into the air.

"This was the fun part," said author Mark Synnott of the steep, icy ascent at about 22,000 feet from Advanced Base Camp to the North Col. So much of the rest of the Everest experience is trudging up snow slopes with packs. "We were finally climbing."

To make camps more comfortable for clients, Sherpas and other support climbers carry bedding and foam pads up the steep slope to the North Col. Everything from tents and oxygen bottles to stoves, food, and fuel must be carried above Advanced Base Camp. "The fact is, the weight of every enterprise on Everest rides on the backs of Sherpas," said author Mark Synnott.

The Chinese flag flies side by side with Tibetan prayer flag colours in the mountain village of Gyirong, the first Chinese town the team entered after leaving Nepal. For decades the Chinese government has encouraged Tibetan nomads to settle in towns like Gyirong. A tent city in town shelters people displaced by a strong earthquake in 2015.