This is me. My name is Paul Davy. I consider myself to be a graphic designer, photographer and sometimes filmmaker, but realistically I just do the things that I love doing. If you asked me what my job role is, I couldn't really tell you. I do lots of things.
I work at Shackleton as a graphic designer and I mostly still am, but I also take photographs, edit photographs, put films together and do anything else that might involve Adobe software and a few other bits along the way.
Anyway, I've been working at Shackleton for nearly five years now and, as part of that, I've been awarded a month-long sabbatical to create an expedition of my own in the spirit of Sir Ernest Shackleton, aka The Boss!
Riding bikes and tinkering with bikes have been a part of my life from an early age. I learned how to use a camera at college, but I learned how to take a photograph at bike races.
I started out at local cyclocross races and eventually on to the Tour of Britain, before travelling further afield to Belgium, Italy and France to photograph The Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, The Tour of Lombardia, Milan-Sanremo and the old lady her self Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
I was asked a few years ago what my Everest moment would be. Would it be Everest itself, or something else entirely? I'd say I've already had it. It was standing on the finish line in the Roubaix Velodrome, photographing the winner (Peter Sagan) coming across the line with his hands held aloft.
I don't have aspirations to win races, break records or climb to the top of the highest mountain, but I've had this idea for a long time of cycling across Iceland with a camera in hand, to see and immerse myself in a landscape not really seen anywhere else in the world. A landscape so beautiful and rugged that it can almost only be imagined in stories, the likes of Lord of the Rings, myths and fairytales.
When it was announced that Shackleton would be offering the sabbatical, I knew exactly what I was going to do.
I was going to Iceland.