Type Two Fun: Why Adventure Photographers Choose to Suffer and What It Produces

Type Two Fun: Why Adventure Photographers Choose to Suffer and What It Produces

Fun That Only Feels Fun Later

There is a term people use in the outdoor world called type two fun, and it describes something specific. It is not the fun you feel in the moment, like a good meal or a lazy afternoon. It is the fun you only recognize afterward, once the discomfort has passed and what is left is a story worth telling. Climbing Avalanche Bulge on Mount Shasta in the dark with a headlamp was not fun while it was happening. Waist deep snow during a boot pack on Lassen was not fun either. Both became something closer to fun once I was safely back at the van, looking at what I had captured.

I think about this concept a lot in relation to my work, because adventure photography runs almost entirely on type two fun. The moments that produce the strongest images are rarely the comfortable ones. They are the moments where something is going wrong, or hard, or scary, and the honest reaction gets caught on camera because there is no time or energy left to fake anything else.

What Made Summit Day Type Two Fun in Real Time

Summit day on Shasta is the clearest example from this whole trip. It started at three in the morning with a tripod shot of the tent in moonlight, cold hands fumbling with camera settings before I had even eaten breakfast. Thirty to forty five minutes into the climb I realized I had forgotten my helmet, which cost an hour and a half to sort out. None of that felt good while it was happening. It felt like a bad start to an already demanding day.

Then came a rescue situation near The Thumb, where I spent roughly two hours helping coordinate a helicopter rescue as a Wilderness First Responder. That was not fun in any sense of the word, not then and not really in hindsight either, since it involved someone else's real emergency. But it was part of a day that, taken as a whole, became one of the most meaningful experiences of my career, precisely because it was so hard and so far from comfortable.

By the time I reached Heartbreak Hill, my legs were heavy in a way that is hard to describe to someone who has not climbed at altitude for hours. Every step felt more expensive than the last. That is not fun in the moment. It is closer to just enduring. But the summit that followed, and the two bars I ate while looking out over the surrounding peaks, felt earned in a way that a comfortable climb never would have produced.

Even the glissade down, sliding on my backside with an ice axe controlling my speed, was not fun in the way people picture when they imagine sliding down a mountain for fun. My legs were shot. My hands were cold from managing the axe. But it was fast, and it worked, and it meant I did not have to spend more energy than necessary getting off a mountain that had already asked so much of me that day.

Why Discomfort Produces Better Photographs

There is a practical reason type two fun connects so directly to good photography, and it has to do with honesty. When you are comfortable, you have the mental space to perform, to pose, to think about how something looks rather than how it actually feels. When you are exhausted, cold, or scared, that performance disappears. What is left is closer to the truth, and truth reads clearly through a camera lens in a way that staged comfort never does.

The moonlit tripod shot at three in the morning is a good example. It was not a dramatic image technically. It was cold hands and a barely visible mountain and a photographer who would rather have been asleep. But it told the truth about what summit day actually starts with, and that honesty is exactly what the brand clients on this project needed more than a polished, comfortable looking image ever could have given them.

The same thing happened after triggering a small slough on my first ski turn coming down from Lassen. That was not comfortable. It was frightening in a real way. But the experience taught me something about risk and decision making that I could not have learned any other way, and that lesson shows up in how I think about every mountain since, whether I am carrying a camera or not.

The Difference Between Suffering for a Reason and Suffering for Nothing

I want to be careful not to romanticize discomfort for its own sake, because that is not really what type two fun is about. The hard moments on this trip mattered because they were connected to something real, a genuine seven day expedition with actual stakes, actual brand deliverables, and actual physical risk. Suffering without purpose is just suffering. Suffering in service of a real project, a real climb, a real story, is where type two fun actually lives.

That distinction matters for how I plan projects now. I do not go looking for discomfort as a strategy. I accept that a genuinely difficult trip, done honestly, will include hard moments on its own, and I try to be present enough during those moments to document them rather than just survive them. The second load into Horse Camp, caused by my own mistake in judging what one carry could reasonably include, was not fun while I was hiking it twice. It became one of the more relatable parts of the story once I was honest about it afterward.

Even the setback of hiking three plus miles on the hiking trail while holding my skis, instead of using the actual ski route, fits this same pattern. In the moment it felt like a dumb, avoidable mistake, and honestly it was. Looking back on it now, it is one of the stories people react to the most, because everyone who has ever done hard physical work outdoors recognizes that exact feeling of realizing you made your own day harder than it needed to be.

Why This Matters Beyond Photography

I think type two fun says something true about most meaningful work, not just adventure photography. The projects and moments people remember and value most are rarely the easy ones. They are the ones that demanded something real, that tested patience or fear or physical limits, and that only revealed their value once the hard part was over.

Looking back at this seven day project across Lassen and Shasta, the moments I am most proud of are almost all moments that were miserable while they were happening. The boot pack with snow sinking waist deep. The rescue situation that ate two hours of an already brutal summit day. The exhausted glissade down on my backside using an ice axe to control my speed, grateful just to be moving downhill under control. None of it felt good at the time. All of it produced work, and a story, worth having gone through it for.

Dalton Johnson is a commercial photographer and director of photography based in South Lake Tahoe, California. Over the last decade he has worked with brands including Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, and Big Agnes across all seven continents. He documents adventure, travel, and the outdoors through photography, film, and writing. Follow along at dalton-johnson.com.