Landing Party, Antarctica, 2004 by Phil Douglis

Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Eleven: Aspects of Antarctica – a travel photo-essay > Landing Party, Antarctica, 2004

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07-JAN-2004

Landing Party, Antarctica, 2004

Although we saw and photographed Antarctica primarily from the comfort of a cruise ship, it was important to land on the continent, feel its ice and rock, and come face to face with hundreds of nesting penguins. In this image, I contrast the size of the large cruise ship and the massive snow-covered landscape behind it, to the tiny Zodiac – an inflated rubber boat filled with parka-clad tourists. Scale incongruities such as this one are a good way to express the size of things.

Canon PowerShot G5
1/500s f/4.0 at 28.8mm full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto

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Phil Douglis		23-Apr-2005 18:48
Thanks, Dave. The Nostromo comes to Antarctica, indeed. There is a sense of the unknown here, intensified by the scale incongruity between the tiny raft of passengers, the abstracted ship, and the huge, glacier covered cliffs that tower over all of it.

Dave Beedon		23-Apr-2005 06:33
Beautiful shot! The immenseness of the land in the background and the ship in the foreground makes the people seem insignificant. The act of setting out to explore the vast unknown reminds me of a scene from the movie "Alien": when the crew of the Nostromo lands on a planet to investigate the source of an emergency signal, some crew members step onto the planet's surface, encountering blasting wind and low visibility---a fearsome, unknown place (but no penguins).

Phil Douglis		05-Jan-2005 22:27
You raise a very good point here Matthias. This image, as you say, is all about scale incongruity. I am contrasting the little zodiac rubber boat to both the huge cruise ship and the Antarctic snowscape behind it. The snowscape is critical in that it also brings a sense of place to this image, as well as looming high over even the big cruise ship -- which tell us something about the scale of the Antarctic environment itself. i agree that the snow on the lower half of the snowscape is featureless and a bit over-exposed. "Properly" exposed snow would be grayish, not white, ( light meters like gray snow because it is "average") so I wanted it to be a bit overexposed. I tried cropping it from the left, as you suggested, and it did great damage to the array of imposing glaciers on the upper rocky portion of the snowcape, reducing their prominence considerably. And so this image must stay like this so that I make the point I want to make about the scale of the ship and the scale of the land itself. Thanks, Matthias, for the suggestion, however. It made helped me understand the full reason of my own decisions here.

Matthias		05-Jan-2005 10:24
An impressive image. After looking at it for a while I notice me liking its right part much better than the left part: The bright snow seems textureless and overexposed. I wonder if one could either recover some of its original texture in photoshop or, alternatively, crop the image a little bit from the left? Cropping would be a delicate process since it would abstract from the context (what we probably don't want too much) and even more enhance the contrast in scale.

Phil Douglis		31-Oct-2004 19:27
Everything about Antarctica is unsettling, Maureen. The scale incongruities are staggering. I was in one of those rubber rafts -- called Zodiacs -- heading to shore, when I made this shot.

Guest		31-Oct-2004 14:38
This is one of those shots that has my stomach turning, because this huge man-made structure seems almost as overwhelming as nature itself. We are mere ants here, which is unsettling. Phil - where were YOU to be able to capture this wonderful shot?

Bailey Zimmerman		25-Apr-2004 20:17
Very powerful image......a figure in the small boat appears to be reaching up to the top of the other ship!!

Phil Douglis		27-Jan-2004 02:04
You have taken my image one step further by adding a touch of real concern for the Antarctic environment as one of the points this picture might make. Mass tourism vs. environmental protection -- a delicate balancing act here at world's end. Cruise ships are an easy, and profitable, way to bring people to the Antarctic Peninsula. It's the only way that many of us could see it in person. On the other hand, more than thirty such ships now bring thousands of people to this area every season, and the effects of mass tourism are already evident. Congestion at tiny ports, disruption of penguin nesting and feeding habits, and trampled beaches have become a very real concern. Antarctica has no government, and sets no rules for visitors. The responsibility for environmental protection rests with the cruise industry and with each and every passenger.

Carol E Sandgren		26-Jan-2004 21:19
In addition to the size incongruity between the ship and the Zodiac, I see here the invasion of a huge structure and all of its possible intentions onto a most perfect, pristine land mass. (Not that I am against tourism mind you, but the huge coldness of the ship's hull does seem quite threatening.)

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