27/05/2026

WEDNESDAY | MAY 27, 2026

6

Man behind M’sia’s historic Everest images

SHAH ALAM: When Malaysia celebrated the conquest of Mount Everest in 1997, national attention was focused on climbers Datuk M. Magendran and Datuk N. Mohanadas raising the Jalur Gemilang at the world’s highest peak on May 23 that year. Far fewer knew the story of the man stationed at Base Camp below – battling temperatures between -19°C and -36°C – processing film by hand and hoping a slow satellite connection would hold long enough to transmit history back home. Mohd Noor Mat Amin, then a photographer with Utusan Malaysia , was solely responsible for capturing and transmitting the historic images from Everest Base Camp, situated at roughly 5,000m above sea level. Now 59 and based in Pokhara, the Kuala Terengganu-born veteran looks back on the assignment as the most demanding chapter of a career spanning more than three decades. Getting to Base Camp was no small feat. Mohd Noor carried close to 50kg of equipment – cameras, a scanning machine, a satellite phone, a laptop and a complete set of analogue film-processing tools – from the mountain gateway town of Lukla with the help of three porters. There were no digital shortcuts available at the time. Everything that followed had to be done o Veteran photographer recalls freezing struggle to transmit history from Base Camp in 1997

were rinsed in water kept between 25°C and 30°C for about three minutes to stabilise the emulsion. “If the temperature shifted drastically because of the weather, the entire process could fail and had to be repeated from the beginning, placing tremendous emotional pressure on the photographer.” Once dried, the negatives were scanned and transmitted via satellite phone, a process taking between two and four hours depending on signal strength and one that occasionally failed altogether. Each image had to be captioned before being sent through an agonisingly slow connection. The entire effort was driven by one objective – ensuring Malaysians could open their newspapers the next morning and see authentic, unmanipulated photographs of their countrymen standing at the top of the world. The Everest experience left a lasting impact beyond journalism, sparking a passion for mountaineering that later earned Mohd Noor recognition in the Malaysia Book of Records for completing 111 solo ascents of Mount Kinabalu in 2010. He retired from photojournalism in 2018 and now lives in Pokhara with his Nepalese wife, whom he married in late 2022, where they jointly operate a tourism and mountaineering company, Bernama reported. Reflecting on the state of journalism today, Mohd Noor urged younger practitioners not to allow technology to erode the instinct to report from the ground. His remarks were made in conjunction with National Journalists’ Day 2026, themed “Media Integrity Strengthens Credibility”, which he described as especially relevant at a time when artificial intelligence and digital manipulation are increasingly shaping the way information is consumed by the public.

Mohd Noor was solely responsible for capturing and transmitting the historic images from Everest Base Camp, situated at about 5,000m above sea level. – PIC COURTESY OF MOHD NOOR MAT AMIN

manually wound to shield it from light. The chemical development process required precision, with colour developer and bleach-fix solutions maintained at stable temperatures between 38°C and 40°C before the negatives

entirely by hand. Working with SLR cameras and analogue film, he developed every negative on-site under conditions that left almost no room for error. Each roll had to be placed into a dark bag and

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