Corey Rich Director/ Photographer

05/22/2026

Three-day weekends are for this: being outside, around a fire, with people who matter. This was shot many years ago. The kids in this photo are in college now, nearly grown. In fact, I hadn’t become a dad yet when I pressed the shutter, and now my daughter is 12! Time moves fast, and this image is a good reminder of one of the best ways to spend it.

I shot this on a Nikon D800, 17-35mm f/2.8, with a split neutral-density filter. When I was growing up, the great Galen Rowell was a hero of mine — and one of his signature moves was using the split ND filter for landscape photography. To be like Galen, I spent years shooting with them, but applied them to lifestyle photography as well, which felt like a unique application. And it worked out here, as the exposure difference between this camping scene and the sky was significant, but my trusty split ND filter bridged it beautifully. 😎

Hope everyone gets to spend some time outside this weekend with those who matter! 🙌

::

05/17/2026

Always good to get out with the next generation of South Lake Tahoe climbers! With a new comprehensive sport-climbing guidebook in the works (follow for updates!) a cool movement is happening here in the Tahoe climbing world. There are new routes going up, old projects finally getting sent, and hardware being updated with the original first ascensionists’ blessing.

Here’s Gantt Miller V making strong work of an old project, now a proud 5.13b called How ‘Bout Them Apples.

(I know Gantt’s father because our daughters played softball together and we coached the team. And whether we’re standing around a field or at the base of a crag, it’s been fun to become friends and watch our kids excel.)

This was a straight-from-the-office shoot. I grabbed a lightweight kit: my Nikon Z6 III and a 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto lens and headed out to the crag. Despite doing all the math on the light and how long it would take to get into position, we still ended up being about ten minutes too late. Had we been 10 minutes quicker, the light would’ve been perfect, but sometimes that’s how photography goes. Not one of my best or favorite pictures ever, but still a nice record of a great moment in South Lake Tahoe climbing history.

::

04/22/2026

On assignment for National Geographic, chasing singletrack through the Slovenian Alps. The trails here are world-class, and the light-dappled forests aren’t too bad either. Locations like these are worth fighting for. Happy Earth Day!



::

04/19/2026

I recently had an excuse to dig through my archives of climbing photography from the Lake Tahoe region, and I came across this image of Mitch Underhill on Cave Rock — a place that’s since been closed to climbing, and a friend we’ve since lost.

Coming across this frame filled me with a bit of gratitude and made me pause on the power of photography. In the moment, you’re always simply trying to make the strongest, most aesthetic image possible, but then, years later, you realize that you were actually preserving something more.

::

04/14/2026

I’ve been part of the climbing world for nearly 30 years, and early in my career I crossed paths with some of the greats. Back then, Dean Potter was undoubtedly one of them. I first got to know him when I was just out of college, shooting for Patagonia, his sponsor at the time. We did an assignment together with his then-wife, Steph Davis, at the Needles, and I watched him move through the world in a way that was hard to categorize.

Over the years, we crossed paths again. I had just wrapped a commercial shoot in Switzerland with my friend Josh Lowell, and we drove to meet up with Pete Mortimer, who was filming Dean’s latest wingsuit BASE jumping exploit in summer 2009. Josh, Pete, and I climbed into a helicopter and watched Dean set the world record for the longest wingsuit BASE jump off the Eiger, flying for 2 minutes and 50 seconds and covering over 4 miles.

Dean’s gift was his ability to channel fear into performance in ways most people can’t imagine. He was a remarkable athlete, a visionary who invented “free BASEing,” which is free soloing and BASE jumping combined, as well as a complex human being. But he had a dark side, struggling with mental illness and being tormented by his demons.

Eleven years after his death, my friends Pete, Josh, Nick Rosen, and the rest of the team at are releasing an incredible new series for HBO called “The Dark Wizard.” This four-part biographic is a revealing and riveting portrait of Dean, and I can’t recommend it enough!! The first episode launches today, so make sure you don’t miss it!

Congrats to everyone involved on this new series!!

Check out The Dark Wizard on HBO!

03/20/2026

Full circle moment.

Thirty years ago I was living out of a Honda Civic, sending slide film to Jennifer Ridgeway and Jane Sievert at Patagonia — frames of a young Tommy Caldwell on big walls, the dirtbag life in full swing. She was one of my first real clients and she shaped everything.

Last August, Patagonia brought me back into the fold to capture a group of tweens on a backcountry climbing and camping horsepacking trip into the Sierra Nevada. So many of the details were familiar. It was myself and my wife, Marina; Tommy and Becca Caldwell; and our good friends Todd and Tara Offenbacher. But the heroes of the photography were our kids: my daughter, Leila; the Caldwell’s kids, Fitz and Ingrid; and the Offenbacher’s daughter, Olive.

These images are outtakes that I can share here, but the hero shots will show up in Patagonia catalogs, websites, and campaigns over the coming months. Keep your eyes open. If you spot Leila, Fitz, Ingrid, or Olive out in the wild, let me know!

Thank you to Heidi Volpe for making this one happen. It was a dream assignment, and more than that, a real full circle moment. The same values that drew me to Patagonia when I was dirtbagging it in my Civic are the same values that brought us all up into those mountains together: authenticity, craft, a belief that the outdoors makes people better.

🙌

🙏🏻

::

10/17/2025

Psyched to present at the Bozeman Photo Expo on Saturday. If you're in town, come check it out! Nikon Event details: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bozeman-photo-expo-tickets-1752284783959?aff=ebdssbdestsearch&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaf4u7Iycp-aV4xrsN0YAiKWeaQqVLiAGfsmFCNmY0ZHoHyK9WQgVXq8wOU1_g_aem_XsVPHexdUMpetDqOCzE3iA

06/05/2025

Check out my recent post sharing some latest work for Visit California!

Photographing the “Up Around the Bend” Campaign for Visit California

11/03/2024

I've been waiting to do this post for four years!

In September, Ski Run Community Park officially opened. Many of you know that this park represents the culmination of a huge grassroots community effort that embodies what makes South Lake Tahoe so great.

Four years ago, my wife Marina and I, along with three other families—Tor and Chris McNamara, Galena Seeger and Lincoln Else, and Lauren and Wynn Ruji—pooled some money together to purchase a .6-acre empty lot owned by Albertsons. (People had tried to get Albertsons to donate the lot for years to no avail. In fact, they put up a chain-link fence around the lot when they heard kids were playing on it. Getting this big corporation to sell us the lot was a HUGE pain!)

Our grassroots vision was to create a pocket park for the Ski Run Blvd area of South Lake Tahoe, which lacked nearby parks for families to enjoy, then donate it to the city once completed. It was a leap of faith, but we knew that with the help of our dedicated friends and community, we could make it happen.

What an adventure building this park became! It would not have been possible without the time, energy, and financial contributions of countless local residents and professionals. To name just a few people who worked either pro bono or at reduced rates to bring this project to life: real estate broker Rene Brejc; surveyor Chip Brejc; landscape architect Ben Fish; attorney Marissa Fox; CPA Michelle Larsen; project manager extraordinaire Sarah Steele; Cory Hannaford and his entire team at Sierra Sustainable Builders, and our former mayor and city councilman Devin Middlebrook. Raising the funds actually felt like the easiest part: over 250 individuals happily contributed, with donations ranging from $5 to $25,000!

We invited kids from Bijou Elementary and the to design the park, and they drew up some very imaginative plans. Though we couldn’t build sky-high rollercoasters and a water park, many elements from their sketches were included in the final design. The park now features an iconic play structure, slide, community table, lawn, and a climbing boulder that will hone the next generation of Tahoe crushers!

The grand opening on September 6th was an incredible occasion, with over 150 donors and community members in attendance. As speeches were made and the ribbon was cut, the sounds of youth continued well into the night: peals of laughter, chattering in Spanish and English, the patter of little feet running, and the mountain wind blowing through the pine trees.

I'm so proud of the Tahoe community!

Special shout outs to Greg Ochoa and Mountain Lux, the Tahoe Fund, Lake Tahoe Community College, Jeff DeFranco, Blue Granite Climbing, Embarc Supply, Ski Run Marina, and Novus Select