Great environmental portrait in the Everest Himalaya of Nepal

NEPAL Khumbu Glacier — Dec 2005 — Pemba Sherpa – the porter for my December 2005/2006 Everest Base Camp Trek on the pass at the snout of the Khumbu Glacier in the Everest Himalaya of Nepal — Picture by Jonathan Mitchell/Atlas Photo Archive

I shot this environmental portrait with my trusty Voigtlander Bessa T and a 25mm f4 Skopar lens. Thanks to the subject, Pemba Sherpa, I managed to pull off a successful trek to strengthen a story on climate change in the Himalayas which I was shooting for Hollandse Hoogte Photo Agency.

Pemba is a great character of the Everest Himalaya of Nepal and I hope that this portrait does him some justice.

Everest mono project on the Sherpas being edited

NEPAL Kunde — An elderly Sherpa woman makes her way into the village of Khumjung from neighbouring Khumjung in the Everest Himalaya of Nepal — Picture by Jonathan Mitchell/Atlas Photo Archive

In the years 2005-2008, I spent quite a lot of time working in the Everest Himalaya of Nepal. Returning with a large portfolio of work on 10MP Nikon DSLR and also many on 35mm film and a couple of digital compacts.

I recently found some time to scan in many of the 35mm frames and have also been re-editing the digital captures as well. I hope to have finished this mammoth editing task in the coming months, mostly for a book project.

More Everest Himalaya climate change aerials of glaciers now available

NEPAL Ngozumpa Glacier — 16 Apr 2005 — Aerial view of the Ngozumpa Glacier in the Gokyo valley of the Khumbu Himalaya ( Everest region ). Glaciologists studying this glacier have concluded the glacier is ‘dead’ and in terminal decline due to increased temperatures from climate change — Picture by Jonathan Mitchell/Atlas Photo Archive

In April 2005, in response to a story idea for Hollandse Hoogte Photo Agency, I flew for three hours over the Everest Himalaya to photograph the large glaciers which litter the area to see how climate change was affecting them. I shot some on a high-quality 6MP sensor and others on fine-grained 35mm film. I recently found some time to scan in these remaining film frames and most of them have now been edited into the colleciton – though several still sit in the queue (as is the case with other work shot on 35mm film in the Everest region during my year up there in the late 2000s).

Most of these images are scanned on a high-quality 3600dpi scanner and are free of dust and blemishes. For more information on my extensive film and digital archive stretching back to 1990, please visit the stock image archive page.

Tibetan Dropka nomads portrait in Namche Bazaar in the Everest region of Nepal

NEPAL Namche Bazaar — Oct 2007 — Tibetan Dropka traders from Ting Ri in Tibet at a market in Namche Bazaar in the Everest region of Nepal. These traders bring various goods over the Nangpa La pass from Chinese-controlled Tibet to sell to Nepalese Sherpas in Khumbu — Picture by Jonathan Mitchell/Atlas Photo Archive

This is one of my favourite portraits from my travels in the Khumbu Himalaya ( Everest region ) of Nepal. These Tibetan Dropka nomads bring cheap Chinese goods to sell to Sherpas over the Nangpa pass and sometimes establish temporary markets to sell their wares. Mostly, they come from the Tibetan village of Ting Ri in Chinese-occupied Tibet. Although a separate ethnic group from the Sherpas, they do share their religion and some customs. Perhaps less so with the Chinese controlling the frontier than when Tibet was an independent country, the Sherpas and the Dropka sometimes marry. The arduous journeys undertaken by these nomads make them the highest traders on Earth and the Dropka of Ting Ri have for around a century been the backbone of many a Himalayan mountaineering expedition, especially the British attempts on Mount Everest from Tibet before it was climbed by Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. Notoriously light-fingered, these nomads are the biggest tinkers I’ve ever encountered and I would often see them during many of the treks I did in the spectacular Khumbu Himalaya of Nepal. The image above is part of a photo essay on the Sherpas I am in the process of re-editing.

You can now find this image and others from this blog plus many more from my stock archive on my new high res stock image database.

Amazing Himalayan mono landscape from Sagarmatha National Park in the Everest region of Nepal

NEPAL Everest Region — Mount Nup La swathed in clouds in the Everest region of Nepal — Picture by Jonathan Mitchell/Atlas Photo Archive

To some extent you can say it is a great honour for a photojournalist to work up in the high Himalayas of Nepal. In my case it was greater, as I got to spend over a year up there. During the various treks, I took a lot of great photographs, so many in fact, I am still editing them years later and recently have been loading them onto my new high res stock image archive database, where they rarely sell at the moment (buried perhaps!). Hence, I have decided to feature some of them here on the blog for people to enjoy and hopefully a few clients to see.

I recently got news from Alamy that my collection is being deleted. For no logical reason I can discern…Hence the images will no longer be available to license on that system in January 2014. You can now license increasing numbers of the digital collection on the new searchable stock image archive database.

This image was shot in the autumn as I trekked out of Namche Bazaar and shows the wonderful landscape surrounding Nup La, the first large peak as you ascend up the Mount Everest Tenzing-Hillary trail (or Everest Base Camp Trail as many term it).

Sagarmatha National Park has some of the most amazing landscapes I have ever seen and once above the treeline at 4,000 metres it does feel a bit like being on another planet. Photographing at this altitude is not easy and when I took this image I was carrying a 28kg rucksack.

I have many other great landscapes from the Everest region and if you are looking for any for your creative projects, then please contact me via email on lightroomphotos [at] icloud.com or jonstmchl [at] gmail.com

I can also now offer mono images as platinum limited edition art prints. Please email for prices.