Momentary Awe | Travel photography blog

Being in Antarctica feels a lot of the times very surreal and nothing proves it more than the constant close proximity to penguins. There’s a natural progression to your reaction to penguins throughout the trip. The first couple of days you keep staring at them and you cannot believe how close they are and how not interested they are in you. You’ll be sitting quietly by the water when all of a sudden you’ll have a penguin almost jump on your lap as it gets out from the water. By the third day you become immune to them and it almost feels normal that there’s always a penguin around you.

During this trip I had my backup camera (a D7000) always on with a long 70-300mm lens just for photographing the penguins and the seals and this strategy really worked as it’s a really light gear combination that tends to be very sharp.

I took the photo below in the first day when I managed to find a spot that was a little bit lower than the snow around so I could get my camera right at the ground level catching some of the fine snow that was getting blown by the wind. As for the penguin, it’s called a Gentoo Penguin and is one of the more common species of penguin found at the northern latitudes of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Shot with NIKON D7000 | 260mm | ƒ/6.3

Yesterday we continued our way through the channels and islands to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula aiming to have a couple of landings throughout the day, grab dinner around 7pm and then head out to Ronge Island to spend the night camping out on the glacier.

The weather since we’ve arrived has been nothing but blue skies and sunshine and while this is nice from a temperature point of view, I would have liked to see a few more threatening clouds over the horizon to be able to shoot more moody photographs. It didn’t happen so far so I went for the long exposures to create some movement in the sky and the only way to achieve this was by using ND filters, while on solid ground.

This is probably my favourite image so far as I think it summarises very well the feeling of being so far away from everything on a remote beach with nothing but penguins crossing your way. As always, I would love to hear what you think of it.

Shot with NIKON D800 | 45mm | ƒ/22

Today started in the most exciting fashion, with a wake up call by the expedition guides letting us know that we will be attempting to go through the LaMaire Channel. This is never guaranteed in these expeditions as the channel is only 800m at its narrowest point and many times there are huge icebergs blocking the way. This morning that’s exactly what happened, but the captain expertly manoeuvred the boat, basically “pulling the handbrake” in order to turn the back of the ship in a really tight space.

With that, our day started in earnest, first, by stopping at Pleneau Island and then moving on to Petermann Island. Both islands are full of penguins and the occasional seal, while the landscapes are simply surreal. Everything looks like it was created and lit for a movie production. Simply beautiful.

The image below is of our ship, the Ocean Diamond anchored in the middle of the channel while the daily excursions are taking place.

Shot with NIKON D800 | 45mm | ƒ/8