On Saturday, the 11th of October, the British Paraclimbing Championships took over the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena in Ratho for a full day of high-level competition. Athletes from across the UK, including several members of Britain’s international high-performance team, gathered to compete across qualifiers and finals in 13 categories for the titles of British Champions 2025.

As for me, I was there as the official photographer for GB Climbing, marking my first assignment with a national sporting body in the UK. This marked an existing milestone in my career, and offered incredible opportunities to learn and grow as a sports photographer in a high-performance environment.

The day began at 10 a.m. with the first rounds of men’s and women’s qualifiers. It was the towering central wall at Ratho - one of the largest climbing arenas in Europe - that hosted all the action for the morning, with four climbing routes active at once in the qualifiers. For me, this was one of the first time shooting climbing, making the qualifiers a perfect chance to find the rhythm of the sport, and translating the research I’d done the night before about climbing into key moment action shots.

To my pleasant surprise, the lighting was fantastic at Ratho. Indoor sports often come with dim and uneven lighting that pose one of the biggest challenges to sport photographers, but Ratho’s setup was remarkably bright and even. With ISO puzzles and image noise out of the way as the main challenge, the chilly autumn temperatures became the biggest variable to adjust to throughout the day. This is as the Ratho arena is built into a former dolerite quarry, presenting a stunning venue but one that keeps the chill of the rock. Still, that’s part of the beauty of sports photography, to adapt to the unpredictable and unexpected with some creative problem solving. No two days are ever the same in this job, and I love that.

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