Ep. 202: Rigging,Cameras,Climbing / Chris Watford

This week Clint and Dawson sit down with Chris Watford. Chris grew up in a very outdoors oriented family. His family owned an outdoor outfitting shop in Roswell, Georgia called Call Of The Wild. The business was established in 1978 by his father. He grew up in this family business and took it over after graduation from college and operated it until 2005. Chris's primary passion has always been rock climbing, having gone for the first time on a Boy Scout trip at 11 years old in 1976. He started in earnest in 1978 or 79. 

Chris has authored and published 5 editions of a rock climbing guidebook series called the Dixie Cragger's Atlas, which cover climbing areas in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. 

While operating the retail shop, he was also a vendor of climbing and safety equipment for industrial users, high rise window washers, Fire and Rescue departments as well as the film and video industry. This led to quite a bit of work on film, television and commercial sets, doing everything from camera safety to assisting with stunt rigging.

 In 1996, he was fortunate to connect with the primary specialty television camera supplier for the Olympic Games in Atlanta Ga. That relationship exists to this day, and Chris has traveled the world working at large sporting events; World Cup soccer, European Cup soccer, Summer and Winter Olympics, The Summer and Winter Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games and others. Chris leads a team of climbers that are responsible for setting up all of the high angle aerial cameras for broadcast.