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Antarctica Portfolio 2007
This page contains photographs taken during my February 2007 Antarctic Photographic Expedition / Workshop. Each is accompanied by a small anecdote or technical description regarding its creation. New images will be added during late February and early March as they are processed.
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A Crack in the World – February, 2007
Lemaire Channel, Antarctica
Canon 1Ds MKII with 24-105mm f/4L IS lens @ ISO 100
On my trips to Antarctica I have been fascinated by both the juxtapositions and contrasts that icebergs provide. I also relish knowing that what I am photographing is transitory; a few days or weeks at most in the future and they'll be gone or changed unrecognizably.
Most landscapes alter in appearance because of variations in light and atmospherics. Icebergs, even monumental ones, are themselves ephemeral.
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Ice Colums – February, 2007
Lemaire Channel, Antarctica
Hasselblad H2 with 55-110mm HC lens and Phase One P45 back @ ISO 100
At the end of the Lemaire Channel is a backwater colourfully named the Iceberg Graveyard. Due to the way the currents flow, icebergs drift down the channel and then end up stranded in this side channel. It's a wonderful place to explore in a Zodiac as one can get very close to bergs of all sizes, and the water is always very calm.
About mid-way through a two hour exploration of the graveyard, we rounded a bend and saw this berg. Seth Resnick, who was in my Zodiac and who always has a ready quip said, "Look, a film company must have left behind their Styrofoam set construction." Indeed that's exactly what it looked like, though no one would venture a guess as to why anyone would need a temple facade with Corinthian columns in Antarctica.
Each column was at least 25 feet high, and the total height of the berg as much as 60 feet. The scale and symmetry were simply astonishing. We would have cruised under the arch, except that the water there was too shallow, even for a rubber Zodiac, and the danger bergs tipping at any moment is very real, making the excercise unsafe even if we'd been able to.
We were puzzled by how this could have formed naturally. here is an explanation by Polar oceanographer Mark Brandon...
When glacier meets the sea it calves into a berg - and this is a small one - and so you get a square thing with teeth at the bottom. Then the teeth have eroded from the bottom by the warm water and got bigger - so not melt water from above. Bergs usually melt more from below. Above the water line you get cold air temps and so no melt and jagged faces as in your amazing picture.
Then the berg has grounded, and tipped - down to the right, so just like a limestone beach shelf - you get a step. Then it moved a bit next step and so on. At waterline you can see next step forming.
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Lion's Mane Medusa. February, 2007
Paradise Bay, Antarctica
Canon 1Ds MKII with 24-105mm lens @ ISO 400
Underwater photography is not one of my specialties, though I greatly admire the work of those photographers that do it well, because I know how hard it can be.
This Lions Mane Medusa (jellyfish) is approximately 4 ft wide, with tentacles 6 – 8 feet long. We encountered it in a glacial bay, and spend about 20 minutes photographing it from our zodiac. You may have already seen my photograph of it with a leaping penguin and iceberg further down the page. The success of that image distracted me from this equally fascinating shot, which will appear in my May '07 gallery show in Toronto.
It isn't often that we encounter underwater photographs with snow streaks.
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Blue Ripples. Antarctica, February, 2007
Hasselblad H2 with 55-110mm HC lens and Phase One P45 back @ ISO 100
Sometimes an image simply speaks for itself. It resonates with the viewer, or it doesn't. This photograph of the ship's wake in the blue Antarctic waters is one such photograph.
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Penguin Swirl. Antarctica, February, 2007
Canon 1Ds MKII with 100-400mm f/4.5L IS lens. 400mm @ ISO 320
One of the challenges when shooting in Antarctica is in conveying the scale of what one is seeing. There are no trees or buildings to lend scale, so one is frequently not certain when viewing a photograph exactly how large or small things might be.
Penguins were therefore introduced to Antarctica early in the last century so as to provide photographers with something to have in their images to lend a sense of scale. This was done at around the same time that the intense out-of-gamut blues of the ice were also introduced.
Incidentally, there are rumours that Fuji was going to produce a film called Bluevia, which would do for Antarctic blues what Velvia did for greens. But the digital takeover lead to the abandonment of the project. Instead, nature increased the saturation of all blues in Antarctica so that digital as well as film photographers could cause their viewers to comment, "Boy, you really punched up the saturation slider on those blues, didn't you?"
Ruins. Grytviken, South Georgia. February, 2007
Hasselblad H2 with 35mm HC lens and Phase One P45 back @ ISO 100
On the island of South Georgia in the far South Atlantic lies the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken. The whale oil tanks and buildings have been made safe and may be visited, unlike some other locations which are off-limits to visitors.
The 2 hours or so which we spent at Grytviken were a frenzy of shooting for me, as I have an affinity for photographing ruins. In fact I have a portfolio of images in preparation from that morning's shoot, a testament to its richness as a photographic location.
The above image is somewhat disorienting – quite deliberately. The rusted forms and shadows merge, with just about the only recognizable thing being the boarded up barracks building in the background. The geometry of desolation.
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Trangle Cloud. Antarctica. February, 2007
Hasselblad H2 with 55-110mm HC lens and Phase One P45 back @ ISO 100
It's always about light. Always. Of course there needs to be a subject, but without interesting light even the most compelling subjects don't often succeed in creating strong images.
We had just spent the most incredible hour sailing up a narrow fiord, into gale force winds. The wind was so strong that waterfalls were actually falling upwards. It was like something from a science fiction movie. We all did a lot of shooting, but the environment was more visceral than it was conducive to strong photography.
As we sailed out of the fiord back into the Antarctic ocean a massive cloud bank descended onto the mountains behind us, but for a few moments before it disappeared the sun illuminated the ocean along with a single cloud. What startled me was the triangular shadow shape in the cloud, exactly mirroring the triangular mountain peaks below it.
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Humpback. Antarctica. February, 2007
Hasselblad H2 with 210mm HC lens and Phase One P45 back @ ISO200
Pretty boring huh? Not !
Here's the thing. Subtle low contrast images with muted colours simply aren't very impressive on the web. But in a large print, this image, taken with a 39 Megapixel back, is highly compelling. The most minute detail on this Humpback whale's skin, and the tiniest ripples in the water as it slices through the Antarctic ocean are visible.
So why show it here? Simply to illustrate that when one views photographs online one is rarely seeing anything more than an modest interpretation of what a well made print can be like. A 24" print of this image will be featured in my gallery exhibit in Toronto in May, '07. Come see it and let me know what you think.
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Penguin Pool. Antarctica – February, 2007
Hasselblad H2 with 210mm lens and Phase One P45 back @ ISO 100
I am always on the look-out for images which are straight / literal representations of reality, but which cause the viewer to stop and ask themselves – what am I seeing? Not quite tromp l'oeil, but not just tricks either.
Penguin Pool above is one such. We were moving through a channel which had a number of large icebergs, and as we passed one we saw for a brief moment or two that a fresh water pool had formed, and four penguins were standing on the ice next to it. As the ship came closer the penguins startled and dived into the pool. I was able to capture this frame, with the penguins looking like carefully arranged cardboard cut-outs, and the pool a mysterious ice carving suspended over a deep aquamarine grotto.
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Tear Drop View. Antarctica – February, 2007
Canon 1Ds MKII with 24-105mm lens @ ISO 200
The environment in Antarctica is so unique, the light so extraordinary, and the scale so beyond normal experience that photographs from there often seem unworldly, or faked. No tricks are needed though because nature serves up so much remarkable landscape as to make it a dream world in its own right.
This photograph was taken from a Zodiac as we cruised a field of icebergs in a calm Antarctic Peninsula bay. I noticed that one berg had a window, and as we pulled close I was able to frame the distant shore and mountains through it.
At the time we remarked how the colour temperature of the berg and that of the snow on the glacier were so different (even though it was mid-morning), but no one had a convincing explanation of why this was the case.
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Penguin Sunrise. Antarctica, February, 2007
Canon 1Ds MKII with 24-105mmL IS lens @ ISO 100
A major advantage of visiting Antarctica on an expedition ship dedicated to photography is that we have the opportunity of making pre-dawn landings to catch the most dramatic light. In this instance we were ashore just at sunrise and were able to take advantage of a lovely dawn and some accommodating residents.
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Lion's Mane Medusa, Iceberg, and Penguin. February, 2007
Paradise Bay, Antarctica
Canon 1Ds MKII with 24-105mm lens @ ISO 400
1/125 sec... f/5.6
It was late afternoon and we were nearing the end of our third zodiac excursion of the day. The light was dimming and a light snow had started. As we moved away from the foot of a glacier and started back toward our ship our zodiac driver Christian, a marine biologist, spotted a Lion's Main Medusa, a large venomous jellyfish. This particular specimen must have been about three feet wide, with tentacles of six to eight feet in length.
We spent several minutes floating close to it so that everyone aboard could have an opportunity to photograph it in the crystal-clear Antarctic water.
At one point I managed to line up a shot with a small iceberg above it, and just enough head-room to include the horizon line and a second larger distant berg. At that moment I was aware of some movement in the frame and fired a shot, though I have to admit that I wasn't really aware of what had actually happened. I simply kept on shooting, trying to get a good close up from various angles. A few minutes later we had to move on, returning to the ship, a warm shower, and dinner.
That evening back in my cabin, I imported the files into Lightroom and started scanning through them. When I saw frame #480 (my camera had just rolled over past 10,000 frames earlier that afternoon, and was now numbering again from zero) I hooted with excitement as I went from thumbnail to full frame. I couldn't believe that I had captured the jellyfish and berg with a penguin also jumping in the frame. A few people passing by in the corridor heard my chortles and came into the cabin, and there were lots of high-fives and jokes about how fast I must be in doing high quality Photoshop composites.
The truth of course is that this is a straight photograph, with only some traditional luminance adjustments and dust spot removal. The frame isn't even cropped very much, and then simply to straighten the horizon a bit.
It's regrettable that there is so much Photograph leger-de-main to be seen that when a remarkable image like Lion's Mane Medusa, Iceberg, and Penguin is made, most people's first response is to assume that it was created with Photoshop rather than being an actual scene in nature. Since there were eight other people in the boat who saw the shot being taken there is no question as to its veracity, even if I was prone to commit a fraud. But I have to admit that even now after living with it for a week or so, I sometimes scratch my head in amazement, along with no small amount of satisfaction.
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King Penguin Conference. South Georgia. February, 2007
Canon 1Ds MKII with 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens at ISO 100
What is it about Penguins? They are so easy to anthropomorphize, I suppose, looking so much like a bunch of self-important politicians in tuxedos.
What more can one say? The world doesn't need a single additional penguin photograph added to its vast collection, but they are so damn photogenic (especially Kings and Emperors) that a few more shots surely can't hurt – can they?
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Drake Passage Sunset. February, 2007
Canon 1Ds MKII with 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens at ISO 400
Photographing the ocean is tough. It has a thousand moods, but I have found that rarely does it offer the contrasts of colour, tonality and form that come together in a way that I find satisfying photographically.
Early in the voyage, just before I descended to my bunk to enjoy 48 hours of enforced horizontality due to the rough seas, I photographed a series of waves bathed in lovely warm evening light – one of the few evenings during the expedition that we were graced with light like it.
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Sunset Icebergs. Antarctica, February, 2007
Canon 1Ds MKII with 100-400mm lens @ ISO 160
The first time that one sees icebergs on the crossing to Antarctica is something to be remembered, and what better way than to have them come into view just at sunset. The best light kept evading us, lurking on the horizon but never really coming any closer. But for a brief time it added some drama as we drew closer to the Peninsula.
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Blue
Lace Iceberg. Antarctica – February, 2007
Hasselblad H2 with 210mm lens and P45 back @ ISO 100
Some images need to be seen as prints – preferably large prints. Photographs with subtlety of detail and tonality are disadvantaged on the web, where bold images with strong form and colour are more eye catching.
Blue Lace Iceberg is one of the photographs taken hand-held
with the H2 and P45 from the deck of the ship that convinced me that working
this way was indeed possible. It also will be one of the featured large prints
at my gallery show later this spring.
