Happy New Year!
I thought I would start the year with a few photos from my recent trip to bottom of the planet. For years I have wanted to visit both South Georgia and Antarctica, and that dream was finally realized when I spent the entire month of November exploring the area on an expedition ship. In many ways it was an extraordinarily challenging trip. We had an unfortunate tragedy on the first segment of the voyage after spending 3 days at South Georgia Island. 2 fellow passengers perished in a zodiac accident just off the shore of Elephant Island, as we were nearing the Antarctic continent. This incident dictated an immediate return to port in Ushuaia, Argentina, and then a few days later another attempt at the Antarctic Peninsula -which was successful.
From a pure photographic point of view, it was a trip for the ages with surreal landscapes and marine environments that team with life- like no other place I have seen on earth. I just created a new gallery on our website filled with about 140 photos from the trip. So, if you want to get a good feel for this amazing area through my lens, you can click here to go directly to the gallery I have entitled: “South of -50°….”. Or just navigate to the gallery page and you will see it amongst the others. A bit of play on words, referring to both the geographic location with latitude lines, as well of the fact that it really does get that cold in Antarctica!
As a photographer, my key takeaways from the trip are the 1. Contrasting landscapes that make beautiful black and white images (see some of them in the gallery), 2. Unique bird life from the giant King Penguins, to the small Antarctic Terns that are endemic to the area, 3. Fascinating ice formations with mesmerizing colors from the deep blue of very old and compressed ice with shades of blue ranging from sapphire and electric blue. 4. Marine mammals like massive Elephant Seals, Fur Seals, and Weddell Seals. 5. 24 hours of light-a photographers dream!
We have a busy year ahead with a number of photographic trips on the docket, including New Zealand, Iceland/Greenland/Svalbard Norway, and back to Katmai with Meghan to photograph our beloved Alaskan Brown Bears. In between, I will be teaching photography with classroom and field workshops. I will have more information on those in a few weeks. As always, I will continue to chronicle the view through my lens on the world on our OSP instagram page that you can find by clicking here or going to @osp_images. Be sure to follow us for daily updates.
Wishing you a happy and healthy 2023!
