Photographer Shows SAS Skills With Exhibition

Grounded: The Old Dairy, 1-3 Crouch Hill, N4 4AP, from July 22

July 21, 2008 - Press Dispensary - A photographic exhibition with a difference is aiming to make a positive contribution to the global environment.

The London exhibition, Grounded, tells the remarkable story of a gifted young photographer’s journeys around the world – from South America to Antarctica, and to the moment in Sri Lanka when he was caught in the tsunami of 2004.

Ed Buckley (34) combines photography with his other career as a rope access specialist – regularly working far from the ground in extremely hazardous environments.

Ed, who has also contributed to abseiling training for the SAS, and provided safety back-up for The London Eye, is hoping the exhibition will raise funds to help restore the dwindling Atlantic Forest in Brazil.

Grounded opens at The Old Dairy, 1-3 Crouch Hill, N4 4AP (from 5pm, July 22 – August 10, 2008) with a proportion of the sale price of each print being donated to The Nature Conservancy’s Plant A Billion Trees initiative.

“I try and get as far from the normal confines of photography as possible - be that geographically on the Antarctic Peninsular or, physically, hanging 400ft from exposed steelwork. I feel compelled to seek those places out because of the adventure and my specialist training,” he said.

That training allows him safely to scale tall buildings and other structures that most photographers could not accomplish, making him a photographer with a big difference.

The Nature Conservancy plans to plant a billion trees across 2.5 million acres of Brazil, helping to secure the future biodiversity of one of the most important parts of the world – and reduce annual carbon emissions by 10 million tons.

Ed’s journeys with his camera are always undertaken at ground level, and hence the name of the exhibition. “I believe that real travel is about experiencing people and landscapes, a shared adventure – good and bad,” he said.

That was especially true on the morning of December 26, 2004, when the Sri Lankan coastal village he was staying in was struck by the tsunami – which killed over 30,000 on the island and displaced over one million inhabitants.

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Ed is also hoping that the exhibition will promote his remarkable photographic ability to magazines and newspapers wanting to commission images that other photographers simply cannot access. Accompanying this release online is an image he took of a colleague at Kempton racecourse, demonstrating the kind of rope skills that Ed can bring to his photography.

Born in Highgate, Ed now lives in Highbury, north London. Ed has always had an interest in photography and decided to take it up seriously after the break up of a long term relationship. Grounded is the first exhibition of his work.

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Charlie Laidlow, David Gray PR
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