February 8, 2006: Patagonia at last! The Nikon D200 and Sony camcorder got their first real workout today as we have now embarked on the “real” part of our trip. Our arrival in El Calafate yesterday evening coincided with the arrival of another plane full of tourists and the town is absolutely packed with visitors. It’s difficult to find accommodation – and seating in restaurants – unless you pre-book. One of the benefits of joining an organised tour is having all this taken care of, leaving you free to enjoy as much as possible.
February 8, 2006: Patagonia at last! The Nikon D200 and Sony camcorder got their first real workout today as we have now embarked on the “real” part of our trip. Our arrival in El Calafate yesterday evening coincided with the arrival of another plane full of tourists and the town is absolutely packed with visitors. It’s difficult to find accommodation – and seating in restaurants – unless you pre-book. One of the benefits of joining an organised tour is having all this taken care of, leaving you free to enjoy as much as possible.
Summer is the peak season, although the glacier is accessible throughout the winter, according to our guide. The lake near El Calafate freezes over at this time, drawing enthusiastic skaters from other parts of South America. A view of the sprawling township of El Calafate shows its location on the edge of Lago Argentina and some of the arid countryside that typifies the Patagonian steppe.
The scenery around the town is spectacular. El Calafate lies between the dry Argentinean plains and the Southern Andes. The town perches on the western bank of Lago Argentina, the country’s largest lake, and it’s overlooked by bare brown hills, behind which lie the sharp peaks of the Andes. Vegetation is typical of an arid area: tussocky grass, low thorn bushes and burrs. The bird in this picture is a caracara, a kind of buzzard that’s common in Patagonia. They frequent the roadsides to feast on the road kills, as this bird was doing when we passed. A group of guanacos feeding on a patch of green grass on a hillside. The 200mm VR lens on the Nikon D200 made it possible to capture this shot. Without it, the animals would have been too small a part of the picture. This vegetation changes as you enter the mountains, with the appearance of Nothofagus bushes, which belong to the same family as the Antarctic Beech and “Fagus” in Australia. There are three local species, ranging from a low-growing shrub like our Fagus to a tall, broad-spreading tree, like the ones you find in Australian rainforests. Many other plants are similar, too, reflecting the close ties between South America and Australia in the distant past. (South America is the only other place in the world with marsupials.) A typical beech forest, showing the similarity of the trees to those of the same species in Australia. After the bus has slowly meandered along the lakeside for about 40 minutes, you get the first glimpse of the end of the ice wall and then, rounding the corner, a large expanse of ice appears. With each turn you see more and more, until you arrive at the first viewing point for the glacier itself. If you’ve never seen a glacier before, Perito Merino is one of the best because it’s cleaner than most and its location is truly spectacular. The first view of the Perito Moreno glacier shows its spectacular location. The standard “tourist shot” of the Perito Moreno glacier, taken from the main viewing point. With the ice and snow occupying more than half of the subject area, over-exposure by 0.7-1.0 EV gave the best results. Using the tele lens to take a close-up shot shows how rugged the surface of the glacier actually is. Once again, over-exposure was essential to record the image tones accurately.
Photographing the glacier is a challenge because the exposure metering system on a camera works by integrating all tones in the area it “sees” to an average grey. This can make large areas of ice and white snow look grey in shots so you have to over-expose to ensure the white reproduce as white. How much to over-expose depends on how much ice or snow there is in your shot and how dark the rest of the picture is. If you shoot raw files, much of the problem is solved because it’s easy to adjust exposure levels as part of the file conversion process and you don’t lose image quality; shooting JPEGs is more risky. Margaret Brown is technical editor for Photo Review Australia Magazine.
Margaret’s Antarctica Post 1: The Preparation
|