End frame: Les Grandes Jorasses, by Pierre Tairraz

Adam Pierzchala

Now retired, I have more time to enjoy being out with my camera looking for scenes and subjects that pique my interest, especially coastal, woodland and close-ups. Although I still have several rolls of 35mm and MF film in my freezer, I shoot almost exclusively digital now

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Do you have a favourite image that you would like to write an end frame on? We are always keen to get submissions, so please get in touch to discuss your idea. You can read all the previous end frame articles to get some ideas!

As so many others have written, the email from Charlotte asking me to contribute to the end frame series came as a surprise, a wonderful honour really, yet at the same time one that filled me with dread: how can I possibly choose a single image from so many that I’ve seen by world-class photographers, some of whom I am fortunate to know having participated in their workshops over many years.

Quite coincidentally, when Charlotte’s email came through, I had been rummaging through my own old family photos, some of which took me right back to 1968 when I had my first glacier hike with my parents in the Chamonix Alps. Both my parents loved camping holidays in the mountains, in fact, Dad was an accomplished mountaineer, having opened several new routes in the mid-late 1930s in the Austrian Alps and the Tatra Mountains in Poland and what is now Slovakia.

And that gave me the idea of choosing an image by Pierre Tairraz (1933 – 2000), a guide from the Tairraz family of Alpine guides in Chamonix. He had studied cinematography, but in my opinion was also a superb stills photographer of the High Alps, working mostly in Black & White. Many of his photos were exhibited in the Tairraz family shop: wonderful silver halide 16”x20” prints, with deep shadows yet controlled highlights.