Stories

February 20, 2006: Today began early with a 6 am wake-up call for the intrepid souls who planned to climb Spigot Peak. This conical point rises up from the water roughly 300 metres and is backed by even taller mountains. The rest of us set off in Zodiacs for the much lower Danco Island, a 1.5-kilometre long land mass in the southern end of the Errera Channel. We had two objectives: observing gentoo penguins and climbing to the highest point on the island for a view over a spectacular part of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The climbers depart pre-dawn for an assault on Spigot Peak. ThisD200 shot is almost monochromatic as the sun has yet to rise above the horizon in the Errera channel.

After packing the D200 in a large plastic bag and stowing it securely in the Lowepro Slingshot bag for the Zodiac trip to the island, I spent a little time grabbing the mandatory penguin shots before tackling the uphill climb. It being late in the breeding seasons, most of the penguins were relatively widely dispersed and the chicks were beginning to lose their downy fluff in favour of proper, water-resisting feathers. Nonetheless, evidence of huge numbers of penguins remained in the form of the generous coatings of dusty-pink penguin poo that spread over most of the rocks. The smell of a penguin colony is a bit like the smell of a fish market near the end of the day! (Definitely not Eau de Cologne!)

Gentoo penguin parent and chick, taken with the Nikon D200. The chick is still partly covered with down and continues to demand a feed of half-digested krill from its parent.

Words are inadequate to describe a perfect landing in Antarctica so I'll let the pictures do the talking for our visit to Danco Island. The tour company's "official" photographer, Nigel, who has been given the task of compiling a series of shots illustrating our activities for the CD-based trip logs that will be given to all passengers, produced his first panorama from the top of the hill and was thrilled with the result. The 13 shots he used were taken with a Canon PowerShot S50 and later in the day we stitched them together with Photo Stitch, producing an excellent result. (Copyright regulations prevent me from publishing this panorama.)

These two shots show the thrill visitors to Antarctica have when they can get really close to wildlife in its natural environment.

The view from the peak of Danco Island, taken with the Nikon D200 and lens set at the 18mm  position. I used the Moose warming polariser to enhance the appearance of this shot.

Zooming in to 200mm produced this excellent close-up of the Professor Molchanov, our cruise ship, on the wind-patterned bay.
 
On returning to the ship, the next destination was Paradise Bay, where we planned to do some more sea kayaking, while the other passengers visited an Argentinean field station and then climbed a nearby peak for a view. Unfortunately, the wind picked up again and, although we set out for a paddle through the brash ice, within about 30 minutes, the increasing wind strength made paddling dangerous and the plug was pulled on the expedition, allowing us to join other passengers at the Almirante Brown field station. As I only had the Ixus 55 in its housing - which by now had endured several complete soakings - I took very few pictures until our return to the ship for the cruise down the Lemaire Channel.

This 11.2 km long passage has been nicknamed the "Kodak Channel", "Fuji Funnel" and "Agfa Alley" by various visitors and is ranked as one of the most scenic waterways on the Antarctic Peninsula. We were to sail through it four times in all during our tour.

The first stop on the morning of 20 February was the base of Mount Scott, where the climbers in the party were to attempt an assault on this medium-sized peak. The rest of us had a Zodiac tour around the Yalour Islands, followed by a landing on Petermann Island, where we could visit a colony of Adelie penguins and, maybe see some blue-eyed shags, south polar skuas and fur seals as well.

Three adult Adelie penguins making a run up the snow to feed their chicks. A grab shot, taken with the D200 as the penguins approached and passed me, totally disregarding my presence.

For the Zodiac tour, I decided to try out my Ixus 750, which I could (with care) keep out of harm's way yet still allow it to be available for picture-taking. Nevertheless, as it was difficult to use the viewfinder for framing shots as the Zodiac twisted and turned, and the LCD was close to useless in the bright sunlight, much of my photography at this time was of the "point and guess" variety. Roughly 50% of the shots I took were unusable, due to poor shot angles, the intrusion of parts of people's arms, coats and cameras in the shot and poor exposures.

By experimentation, I've found the best results come from setting the camera's exposure compensation to -0.7 EV for shots of icebergs, while subjects containing roughly 30% of dark areas work best with -0.3 EV. Leaving the camera on auto produced washed-out pictures, although use of the snow scene mode proved to be successful.

With the D200, I obtained some great shots of the blue-eyed shags on Petermann Island as I was able to creep up quietly quite close to the colony and some of the younger birds were unafraid of humans.

A juvenile Antarctic blue-eyed shag, photographed with the 200mm lens on the D200. I used a wide lens aperture (f5.6) to isolate the subject from the background.

Getting "up close and personal with two inquisitive Adelie penguin chicks on Petermann Island. I waited for about 15 minutes as the chicks edged closer and closer to the two humans before taking this shot.

Another late afternoon Zodiac cruise, this time through the tabular (flat) icebergs in Pleneau Bay, rounded off an interesting - and activity-packed day.

Margaret Brown is technical editor for Photo Review Australia Magazine.

Margaret's Antarctica Post 1: The Preparation 
Margaret's Antarctica Post 2: Buenos Aires 
Margaret's Antarctica Post 3: El Calafate 
Margaret's Antarctica Post 4: El Chalten 
Margaret's Antarctica Post 5: Tierra del Fuego 
Margaret's Antarctica Post 6: Drake Passage 
Margaret's Antarctica Post 7: Arrival in Antarctica 
Margaret's Antarctica Post 9: Farewell to the Frozen Continent 
Margaret's Antarctica Post 10: Wrap-up