Ed Cooper Photography
Your
Premier Site for Mountain Imagery
& Poetry by Deborah P. (Debby) Cooper
Where humor is not a rumor
and rhyme is
not a crime
ed@edcooper.com
debby@edcooper.com
WEBSITE UPDATE, MARCH 20,
2009
THERE IS A PODCAST INTERVIEW
WITH ED COOPER ABOUT MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY ON iTunes!
YOU CAN CHECK IT OUT AT: http://www.7photographyquestions.com/audio-podcast/
OR SPECIFICALLY HERE:
http://www.7photographyquestions.com/2009/01/podcast-35-mountain-photography----an-interview-with-ed-coop.html
NEWEST
BOOK RELEASE, November 2008
SOUL OF THE
ROCKIES
PORTRAITS OF AMERICA'S LARGEST MOUNTAIN
RANGE
This is the second book in the Soul of the
Heights series


To order books from this website, click here.
SOUL OF THE HEIGHTS
50 YEARS GOING TO THE MOUNTAINS
This is the first and original book in the Soul of the Heights
series
Above is the front
cover of the book, including the inside flap. It is a hardback, 210
pages, with over 140 photographs. The title is embossed in gold.
In describing this book release, I will quote from Falcon Press's
website:
|
Soul of the Heights is the story of a pioneering climber with a
passion for, and lifetime dedication to, the majestic mountains of North
America. First conquering the awesome faces and peaks-many of them
previously unclimbed-then photographing them with an intimate eye, Ed
Cooper has maintained this love affair with the mountains for more than
fifty years.
His unique story evokes the now-legendary early days of mountaineering
and includes exclusive first-hand accounts by climbers of that era about
many of the first ascents of new routes that have since become top
destinations for new generations of climbers. These historic ascents
include routes in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State; the "Chief,"
near Squamish, British Columbia; the Bugaboos, also in B.C.; and El
Capitan in Yosemite Valley, California. These ascents were all achieved in
the 1950s and early 1960s at a time when climbing standards were rising
dramatically.
Fascinated by the challenge of the heights, Ed Cooper became the first
"climbing bum" in the Pacific Northwest, where he rapidly acquired a
reputation as one of the most important all-around climbers of his
generation. This book provides rare insight into the world of
mountaineering and rock climbing during that era, revealing the intensely
competitive nature of the sport at a time when so many opportunities were
available for carving a place in climbing history as the first to complete
a new challenge.
The young climber's evolving quest to photograph
the essence of the mountains he held in such awe resulted in a series of
spectacular portraits of many of the best-known peaks of North America.
These images provide the visual drama in Ed Cooper's story, which also
contains many historically interesting photos of
early climbs, and of such noted mountain personalities as Norman Clyde,
Warren Harding, and Galen Rowell. |
This book, released in the autumn of 2007, may be purchased through your local
store, or online at www.Falcon.com . (The Falcon Guides label has one of
the best selections of outdoor books to be found anywhere--check out their web
site.) The retail price is $39.95 US and $43.95 Canada. There is also
a numbered, cloth bound with slip-in case, limited edition of 209 copies; this
version retails at $100 (US funds). The book's back cover appears further down
this page. TO ORDER SIGNED BOOKS FROM THIS
WEBSITE, CLICK
here.
THIS BOOK WAS A FINALIST IN THE 2007 BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK
FESTIVAL AND WAS ONE OF AMAZON.COM'S TOP 7 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE MONTH OF DECEMBER 2007.
IT WAS ALSO AWARDED HONORABLE MENTION IN THE DESIGN AND ARTISTIC MERIT CATEGORY
OF THE 2008 NATIONAL OUTBOOR BOOK AWARDS.
I want to take this opportunity to comment on a particular passage in the book which appears on
Page 95. I was quoting from the daily journal Mike Swayne kept of
a climb of the North Face of Mt. Terror. Mike wrote: "Chuck [Charlie
Bell] made no bones about the drugs he was on and popped pep pills several
times." Several paragraphs later I added this comment: "At the time I was personally
unaware of any drug use on Charlie's part...." Charlie Bell vehemently
denies he was using any drugs. I post his statement in full at
the end of this page.
****************************50th Anniversary of***
Poetry &
Chapbooks
*********
***************************going to the mountains
Seen to the right
of me in the center picture is Jim Nelson, owner of Pro Mountain
Sports in Seattle. (Check out their ultra
light mountain gear). This is on the
summit of Mt. Adams, 12,276 feet, in Washington State. In the
background is Mt. Rainier, 14,411 feet in altitude. Probably 20
to 30 people visited the summit that day, and I gave my camera to
one of them to take the picture of the two of us. The flag and
banners were there already and as you can see, it was very windy
and on the cold side. I call this photo "Dos Amigos on Mt.
Adams". We and another party came up from the north;
everybody else came up from the south. It was 50 years earlier to
the day that I climbed Pinnacle Peak, a satellite peak of Mt.
Rainier which can be spotted with binoculars from this point. The
following view from our stock photo library was the original
photo appearing on this home page.
Where the accent is on
Nature
This view of frost on vine maple leaves
(#404621 - as it appeared on the cover of Sierra Magazine) was
taken early on a cold clear October morning on the east side of
the Cascade Mountains of Washington State in Wenatchee National
Forest.
IMAGE ABOVE AND ON
FOLLOWING PAGES, EXCEPT WHERE NOTED, ARE COPYRIGHT BY ED COOPER.
THESE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AND MAY
NOT BE USED AS CLIP ART. ANY USE OF THE IMAGES ON THESE PAGES
IS A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAWS!
ED COOPER PHOTOGRAPHY
P.O. Box G, El Verano, CA 95433 (U.S.Mail)
3800 Grove St., Sonoma, CA 95476 (Courier - UPS, Fed-X,
etc.)
Phone: (707)
996-1934
ed@edcooper.com
Poetry Chapbooks
- debby@edcooper.com
All eight chapbooks (scroll down to see the latest) have
received excellent reviews. You will find meter, humor,
and a lot of rhyme in each of them. (Chortle
Blossoms is ALL humor.) Please send check or money order made out to
Deborah Cooper, P.O. Box G, El Verano, CA 95433. The price of each chapbook
(this includes cardboard-protected shipping) is $10.00; for price breaks on book
cost and postage for four or more books, please e-mail Debby at the e-mail
address given at the top of this page. You may request signed chapbooks at
no extra charge.To review a page of sample
poems
, click here.To view a second page
, click here.
The covers of Chortle Blossoms and
Rays of Light both
feature
Ed's photos (pansies in Shore Acres State Park, OR
and trail on Slide Mountain in the Catskills, NY).
The cover of Observations of a Dinosaur is
the work of Marie
Summers. The cover of Venus on the Half Shell features the famous painting by the 15th
century Italian artist Sandro Botticelli. The covers of Talking Back, Feline/Canine, and
Grandma's Top 40 are the work of CarrieAnn Thunell. The cover
photo of Pizza for Breakfast is a joint effort by
Debby (who took the original photo) and Ed (who improved it using
Photoshop).



For the first time in over 35 years, Ed started to offer prints of his photography
for sale. The prints are made on a high end pigment-based
Epson printer.
These prints are
made from digital scans made at from 2400 dpi to 4800 dpi on a high end scanner.
The file sizes on prints made from 4x5 and larger transparencies/negatives range
up to 300 megabytes and more. More recent prints are made from original digital
images. The final prints are indistinguishable from traditional wet darkroom
prints, and the digital darkroom has provided controls over the image in ways
undreamed of in the traditional wet darkroom. Every print will be made and
signed by Ed personally, and will be shipped accompanied by a signed Certificate
of Authenticity. To order prints from this website,
click
here.Below
is the back cover of the SOUL OF THE HEIGHTS BOOK, including the flap.

More on Charlie Bell: Mike Swayne kept a detailed daily journal on all
trips he took into the mountains. He wrote in them events that happened
during each day while the events were fresh in his mind. That journal is what
I was quoting from. I present here Charlie Bell's reply in full (now more than
46 years removed from the event):
Drugs? Pep pills?
WHAT??
This is absolute
nonsense. I don't know where Mike got that idea. This was 1961. I had never used
any drug and had no idea what a pep pill was. (I may have heard something about
benzedrine but I had never actually seen any.) I don't know what Mike saw me
eating -- it must have been some sort of candy, I suppose -- but I give you my
word (and it's about time somebody took it) that I had no "drugs" on that climb
or on any other.
Not, that is, until 1972 when
I was leading a group of young (age 14-15) companions on a traverse of the
Hermit Range in B.C. Before we left for Canada my brother, an M.D., had given me
a prescription for dexedrine to put in our first aid kit. We climbed
Tupper, then bivouacked (I was always a slow climber), then went on to Mt. Rogers. As
we were descending I noticed the boys were stumbling (to be honest I was
stumbling a bit myself) so -- for the first and only time -- I broke out the
dexedrine and gave each member one tablet. The stumbling ceased and we all made
our way down to the Hermit Hut without incident (where one of the youngsters
said he experienced some mild and rather pleasant delusions before he went to
sleep). That is the only time in my climbing career that I ever ingested
anything that could be characterized as a "drug."
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