On the left, The Big Softie; on the right, The Adventurous Hero. If this is a bit too much to take, skip all this and go straight to the photo galleries. Otherwise, Dear Browser, welcome to the obligatory photographer-profile page.

My name is Ian Swarbrick. As far as I`ve been able to determine, I am unique. I`ve looked around and haven`t found another English bus driver for handicapped children in north - east Switzerland.
Five years ago there was a man in the mirror who fitted that description, but he was not yet the incomplete tetraplegic he is today.
It happened in 2004. I collided with a car while on my motorbike. With fifteen kilos of camera gear on my back, I landed headfirst on the street, breaking the fourth vertebra in my neck in three places. Lying on that road, I had a taste of what Christopher Reeve suffered for so many years. I was totally paralysed. There I lay, crying like a little baby, and within seconds of coming around, weighing up the dire consequences for the rest of my life.
Rega, the Swiss helicopter rescue service, did their usual splendid thing, and within a short time I was under the knife in a St Gallen hospital. Shortly before the operation, the surgeon noticed I could move my toes: "there`s a chance that you will be able to move again, let`s hope so".
The surgeon took seven hours to repair the breaks in my neck, but by so doing he took the pressure off the spinal cord. Dr Baumgartner, I am forever in your debt.
After the operation, my legs were back in action, but my arms remained completely motionless for the three most frightening days of my life. Slowly though, as the bruising to the spinal cord diminished, the movement came back, starting with the forefinger of my right hand, sometime on day three. And the staff at The Swiss Paraplegic Centre were collective in their opinion that my recovery was amazing.
But the damage is permanent. There`s now a metal plate and 6 screws in the front of my neck behind my throat, and every square inch of my skin below it is numb, and burns with a constant heat. What else to do but put on a rucksack, with tent and camera gear, and head for the mountains to capture the magic light of dawn and dusk? I`ve become another handicapped person in over-compensation mode, just like my mate Norman.

My interest in photography did not begin with a fascination with the medium itself. Concepts like aperture and focal length had no allure. It evolved instead from a devotion to mountains and wilderness. This, a devotion I`d always had, was very much intensified by a 1987 trek to the base camp of K2, the world`s second highest mountain, in Pakistan. A yearlong round-the-world mountaineering "odyssey" later strengthened the addiction. Expeditions to the Greater Ranges, with varying degrees of success, followed at regular intervals - Masherbrum Two, Pik Lenin, Fluted Peak, Mount Mckinley, Tharpu Chuli, Naya Kanga and finally to Everest`s north ridge in 1993.

I had previously followed a conventional career course, as a Chartered Surveyor in England.
But the 1987 experience showed me that, to put it metaphorically, the colour of my parachute was different than most others.

Looking back, I can recognise the gradual shift in my photography from a mere recording of an adventure to a more sensitive interpretation of the Earth`s wild places. In this regard, the European Alps monopolise my attentions these days. With just a little extra effort, plenty of wilderness can be found right here in Central Europe. I am lucky to have St. Gallen, Switzerland, as a permanent Base Camp, where my Swiss-born wife, Adriana, tolerates this obsession with more patience than I deserve.
I aim to portray photographically each of the 101 sub-regions of the Alps as outlined in the book 1000 Gipfel der Alpen by Ernst Höhne. St Gallen is equidistant from both ends of the Alps, leaving me well placed to be the first to complete such a project. My homage to this magnificent mountain range is also paid through a multi-vision slide-show Passion Alpen, live in German.