After a stunning cruise through towering icebergs, we landed on Booth Island. A wide sweep of pristine snow curved up to the Gentoo colony on the hill. By this stage in the trip I had gotten over the sheer, overwhelming excitement of being surrounded by penguins and could focus more on creating interesting compositions. It was much less muddy too, which was nice!
I really like minimalism in wildlife photography. I like graphic shapes, simple colour palettes, and eye-catching compositions. To try and take a break from taking lots of close-up, portrait-style images of birds, it’s also good to go to the other extreme and open up a lot of negative space in the frame. It gives a sense of the scale of the animal and the landscape that it’s in. The snowy landscape was perfect for this, allowing the penguins to be tiny in the frame without getting lost amidst other details.
A number of penguins were deviating from the worn-down pink penguin highways, and forging their own paths up the slope to their colony. It was an interesting way of isolating them in their environment, tiny penguins in a wide expanse of white snow. You can even see little trails of footprints from other penguins that had taken the long way up. Patterns can make effective use of lots of negative space, while still having an element that draws the eye.
I love the contrast between white snow, grey sky, and brightly-dressed figures. The tiny penguin on their penguin trail gives it a bit of context as well, instead of it just being two people on a snowy slope – it’s definitely Antarctica.
To get the snow a nice crisp white, you have to overexpose a little. With a nice overcast sky giving soft lighting, most of these were shot at about 1/800sec, ISO200, f/5.6.
And here’s a good old white(ish) bird on a white(ish) background to finish off! Southern Giant Petrels are very similar to Northern ones, with the exception of their greenish bill tip, and their plumage ranging from a mix of pale and dark brown to almost completely snow-white. They also have gorgeous spangled eyes. That said, they’re not the prettiest of birds, and when annoyed will projectile vomit all over whatever is annoying them. So, best not to get too close.
