{"id":2470018,"date":"2020-08-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/l-renee-blount-urbanclimbr-photographer\/"},"modified":"2022-02-03T16:21:18","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T23:21:18","slug":"l-renee-blount-urbanclimbr-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/adventure-travel\/advice\/l-renee-blount-urbanclimbr-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"How This Photographer Learned to Bet on Herself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Road tripping has become an essential part of Lanisha \u201cL.\u201d Renee Blount\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0path to success. The Bay Area\u2013based\u00a0innovation strategy consultant began her photography career as a side hustle. After pursuing master\u2019s degrees in both design and urban planning\u2014\u201cliving under a rock for five years,\u201d as she puts it\u2014she wanted to combine her dual passions of visual storytelling and climbing. In 2018, after she began a consulting job in Manhattan, she started taking on photo assignments for outdoor brands, using weekends and vacation time to travel from Brooklyn to California, where she shot fellow climbers in places like Joshua Tree and the Eastern Sierra. Here, Blount talks with Christopher Keyes about what she\u2019s learned along the way\u2014from her desire to illuminate Black joy to the key ingredients for a fun road trip.<\/p>\n

\n

On Pursuing a Career in Photography<\/h2>\n

\u201cAt one of the firms I worked at after grad school at Harvard, I was getting raised eyebrows, like, You\u2019re taking all your vacation to fly out and do this photography work? And then my boss said, \u2018You know, I bet you could make that work full time if you wanted to.\u2019 So I just decided to take a bet on myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI take my brother on adventures every year, and really wanted to capture that. I recognized that the life I live is really different from some of the people I went to high school with and some of my family, and I wanted to illuminate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy smile is very integral to who I am, and I want to share the things that make me smile in that way. There is so much negative imagery of people who look like me, and it can get really tiring and overwhelming to see our bodies portrayed that way. People need to see Black people being joyous. More importantly, we need to see ourselves being happy and joyfully reclaiming spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Representation in Outdoor Media<\/h2>\n

\u201cThere are very few professional Black climbers, but there are tons of Black climbers who climb so well, who should be seen<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the outdoors and outdoor media, there\u2019s so much of a culture of suffering, of summit culture. Selling suffering to other people of color is not going to get them outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Road Trip Essentials<\/h2>\n

\u201cRecently I\u2019ve been exploring California\u2019s Eastern Sierra. You can do a lot there. If Bishop is too hot, you can go up to Tuolumne Meadows or Mammoth Lakes or Owens River Gorge. There\u2019s just so much, and that makes it really nice for road tripping.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do I always pack? Dried mango, plantain chips, and blueberries. Maybe a little charcuterie. I like to bring in a little bit of bouge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA good climbing or road trip is about the people I go with. I do consider myself an athlete. I train for climbing<\/a>. When I\u2019ve gone out with people who don\u2019t allow themselves to have a drink if they, say, didn\u2019t climb their project, it\u2019s not as fun. It\u2019s fun to try hard, but I feel like I\u2019m winning just being able to be in some of these places.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How L. Renee Blount, a.k.a. Instagram’s @urbanclimbr, blended her passions for climbing, travel, and design into a budding photography career<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44696,"featured_media":2416141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"uuid":"8d07d006f41d467c324d4af4dd863715","footnotes":""},"categories":[2570],"tags":[2640,2849,2642,2638,2654],"byline":[24],"ad_cat":[],"legacy-category":[],"class_list":["post-2470018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice","tag-climbing","tag-evergreen","tag-media","tag-photography","tag-road-trips","cluster-the-ultimate-road-trip","byline-christopher-keyes"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"How This Photographer Learned to Bet on Herself","url":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/adventure-travel\/advice\/l-renee-blount-urbanclimbr-photographer\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/adventure-travel\/advice\/l-renee-blount-urbanclimbr-photographer\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/12\/l-renee-blount_h.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/12\/l-renee-blount_h.jpg"},"articleSection":"Travel Advice","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"jversteegh"}],"creator":["jversteegh"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online","logo":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/favicon-194x194-1.png"},"keywords":["climbing","evergreen","media","photography","road trips"],"dateCreated":"2020-08-18T00:00:00Z","datePublished":"2020-08-18T00:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-02-03T23:21:18Z"},"rendered":"