In several recent issues of Photosafaris.com we’ve been preparing photographers for one of the most incredible adventures a nature photographer can experience, a voyage to The South—Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands. We’ve discussed equipment, clothing and strategies for boat-side shooting, but all of these articles really danced around that singularly most exciting event—making landings at these locations. We must confess that even as we write this we get a little chill of anticipation as, like kids at Christmas, visions of (well, not sugar plums) seals, penguins and glaciers, do indeed dance in our heads.

	A nearly-grown gentoo chick taps its parent’s bill in a food-soliciting gesture that culminates in the adult regurgitating a slurry of krill into the chick’s gullet.

Our strongest advice for anyone making a landfall at one or more of these exotic locations, as a bunch of us lucky folks have done in past trips, is to plan on shooting everything. It is too easy to get obsessed with a particular vision and to spend too much time on one subject. In doing so, you may miss many other great shots. Digital photography has now freed us from many of the constraints and problems previously associated with film. Before we go any further, let’s explore this idea.

We’d like you to keep two points uppermost in your mind when you’re photographing in The South (the term we’ll use for this entire region). If you’re shooting digitally, remember that you can and should, adjust your ISO as circumstances require. The light and weather may change constantly, going from sun to storm and back again in just a few hours at any landing, and you’ll be far more productive if you remember to raise your camera’s ISO when the light level drops, and to lower the ISO when the skies lighten or its sunny. All modern cameras produce wonderful images with ISO 200, and most will do an equally fine job with an ISO of 400. We’re shooting Canon 1D Mark IIIs now, and ISO 400 and even 800 are remarkably good—so much so that we rarely drop to ISO 200, and instead keep our ISO at 400 for the majority of our shooting.

	By maximizing the digital potential we captured the essence of a hunting skua as it sailed over thousands of densely-massed king penguins while on the lookout for an unprotected chick.

What does raising, or lowering, the ISO accomplish? As you may know, the ISO rates the sensor’s sensitivity to light. Higher ISOs are more light sensitive, which allows you to use a faster shutter speed, a smaller aperture or a combination of both in a given lighting condition. For example, at ISO 400 the exposure for a given scene might be 1/1000th sec. at f/5.6, a shutter speed fast enough to capture most action. At ISO 200 you’d lose a stop of light, dropping the shutter speed to 1/500th sec.; at ISO 100 you’d lose still another stop, for a shutter speed of 1/250th sec., not fast enough to stop most action.

Higher ISOs may generate digital noise or color artifacts will show up most visibly in dark or underexposed areas. While noise can be objectionable, it can be addressed and either reduced or eliminated by using software—Noise Ninja comes to mind—or by converting a color image to black and white. We’d rather have to deal with noise, which we may be able to correct, than deal with a blurred image because of a shutter speed that was too slow. If it’s not sharp, that is, if it is blurred because of camera or subject movement, there’s little you can do to correct that problem.

We’d also like you to consider the digital potential of fixing problems in the RAW converter or Photoshop afterwards. While we would be the absolute first to advocate getting the shot right the first time and to not waste time fixing poorly-made images in Photoshop, these software programs can play a really important role on your trip to The South. Here’s one example:

Imagine a beautiful shoreline with hundreds of king penguins lining the beach and each rolling breaker topped with penguins surfing to shore. The sky is beautiful and the background—glaciated valleys and snow-capped mountains—gleams in the golden light of late afternoon. There’s only one thing wrong—someone in a bright red jacket has stepped into your field of view far down the beach and, try as you might, you can’t get that red jacket out of your picture!

Our advice is: don’t worry about it! Rather than spend the rest of your afternoon growing increasingly frustrated as the perfect shot eludes you because of that red jacket, take the picture with the intention of cloning out the offending jacket later. While some might say that altering the reality of the scene ruins the integrity of the image, we’d suggest that doing so is the practical solution.

	A natural ice sculpture on a wave-worn stranded iceberg; we could see a "face" looking to the lower left.

Our typical kit for onshore shooting includes a tripod, backpack and dry bag, one camera body, and several lenses. We transport our backpack ashore in a Cabela’s Dry Bag so that salt spray, errant waves or a clumsy drop into the drink at the landing site doesn’t destroy our gear. Once ashore at our landing site, we remove the backpack from the dry bag, and place several heavy rocks in the latter so it doesn't blow away in a strong wind.

And wind can be an issue, so pay attention to our next gem of information for it is truly important. Never, ever, leave your camera-mounted tripod unattended and never leave a backpack below the maximum high tide mark if there are glaciers in the area. Catabatic winds, generated by cold air rolling down steep hillsides or glacial ice fields, can strike with near hurricane-like force without warning. The winds can be powerful enough to practically knock you off your feet, and they are certainly strong enough to knock over a tripod. Both of us can attest to that—we were lucky that nothing broke when the wind blew over our tripods and cameras. Another photographer on a past trip dodged true disaster when an unexpected wind toppled his camera which almost fell into the surf.

	Don’t leave your pack unattended on the beach for it may be claimed by an aggressive seal or washed away by an unexpected wave.

Don’t leave a pack unattended on shore either. In some areas an unattended pack may become a belly-scratcher for an 18-foot-long elephant seal, or a pillow for an aggressive southern fur seal. You might also discover that a calving iceberg across the bay has generate tsunami-like waves and washed your bag away, as Mary almost experienced on a past trip. Mary had left her pack on shore while she did an hour-long Zodiac cruise through icebergs, but she was lucky. A few minutes after she returned to the beach a calving ‘berg generated a four-foot high wave that scoured the beach requiring penguins, tourists and guides to scramble for the high ground. Had that occurred only ten minutes earlier …well, we’d be writing about a really sad situation!

The choice of what you wish to carry in your gadget bag or backpack is a personal one and will depend upon your photographic objectives. Some folks will have a tremendous success with nothing more than a point-and-shoot camera, while others will bring with them everything but the kitchen sink. We wish we could get off with a lighter load, but we’re afraid we lie somewhere in the middle of these two extremes! Here’s what we generally carry ashore:

Joe’s Pack: 16-35mm zoom, 28-300 zoom, 90mm T/S lens and 500mm telephoto. One camera body, one flash, extra camera battery—all inside a Lowepro PhotoTrekker. Gitzo tripod with BH-55 ball head.

Mary’s Pack: 17-35mm zoom, 28-300mm zoom, one camera body, extra battery, flash. If the shooting opportunities warrant it, Mary will carry her 500mm as well. All but the 500mm will fit into a Lowepro NatureTrekker. Gitzo tripod with BH-55 ball head.

With these kits we’re prepared for just about anything. Since I don’t mind carrying the weight, I use a larger backpack that will accommodate the 500mm lens, which is somewhat of an extravagance in The South, since most subjects can be approached quite closely. However, the narrow angle of view and magnification of the 500mm does allow us to isolate detail, to create intimate portraits, and to capture small subjects. For all of these reasons we feel its worth having on the trip.

	Having a strong foreground in a wide-angle image will yield the best of both worlds—detail and scenery, and provide a real sense of place.

We do a lot of wide-angle shooting in The South, not just because the landscape is spectacular, because it is often fairly easy to get close enough to an interesting foreground to include it in the image. Many wide-angle shots suffer if there isn’t an interesting or visually-powerful foreground, so when we can, we creep close enough so that the image ends up as a wide-angle portrait that happens to have plenty of pretty background in it as well.

As we said in the beginning of this article, plan on shooting everything. Exactly how you do this, however, will make a big difference in how interesting your images will be. Here are some suggestions.

	A telephoto lens compresses distance so that a distant mountain ridge looms behind the penguin.

As we mentioned, with wide-angle lenses (the focal lengths we use most frequently to capture the "big picture") try to incorporate an interesting foreground into the scene, and make that your center of interest. Doing so, you can transform a penguin shot from just a simple snapshot to one that gives it a sense of place; one that says, "this is where penguins live!" Conversely, you can also create a sense of place by using telephotos, especially if you can isolate a subject against a distant background where, by increasing the size of both via the telephoto magnification, you’ll also give the image a sense of scale. For this to work you’ll need your subject to be some distance away so that it not only fits into the frame of the telephoto shot but also provides enough working distance so that the background has some degree of detail or sharpness. The background will go completely soft and will blur out if you try this long-lens technique with a subject that is too close, since the depth of field will only carry a limited distance behind your subject. This is fine if you just want to emphasize your subject and you’re not trying to convey a sense of scale.

	Close up, the narrow depth of field of a telephoto creates a soft, blurred background.

While we always recommend using a tripod, some of your most exciting shooting may take place on the Zodiacs as we cruise rocky harbors or ice-flows where you’ll have to handhold your camera. With that in mind, we suggest that the lens you use as your "zodiac lens" has image stabilization (vibration reduction in Nikon) so that you can still get sharp shots. Aside from that, if you want the sharpest images possible, use a tripod when ashore.

You’ll be using your medium or long telephoto lenses for the majority of your wildlife photography, as this allows the greatest working distance between you and your subject. This helps to insure that your subject will act naturally and that you’ll have a chance to capture action and interesting behaviors. If your knees or other joints permit, consider kneeling or otherwise dropping down to a subject-level position so that your wildlife images have closeness and intimacy, a sense that’s often lacking when you’re shooting down upon a subject.

Regardless of the lens you’re using, if you really want to capture natural behavior and action action, then prepare to be patient! You’ll see and photograph far more interesting sequences if you sit back and relax and let the wildlife act naturally. You’ll get more out of your trip this way, too, as you’ll be treated to marvelous insights into the natural world. You may even find your photography secondary to the experience, and that is a wonderful thing!

Of course, we can’t ignore the spectacular landscape and we’d suggest using every lens you bring along to capture different views and perspectives. Our favorite focal lengths for most of our landscape shooting lie in the 70-200mm range, as this can isolate telling details that define the scene. As a matter of fact, we think landscape photography is far more difficult than wildlife shooting, as all that’s required for the latter is filling the frame to make an interesting shot—and if you can capture action or behavior too, you’ve got it made! Our favorite lens for shooting landscapes is Canon’s 28-300mm, which is image stabilized, covers virtually the entire focal range we’re likely to use, and is sharp. Nikon’s 18-200 is an equivalent, and Tamron makes its own version of the 28-300.

With landscapes it’s important to consider what you’re trying to convey. Are you attracted to a detail in the landscape or to the grand scene? Will a telephoto extraction isolate the defining component or must a wide-angle lens be used to provide that sense of place? We often find that a wide-angle lens includes too much, especially unwanted foregrounds or backgrounds, and a telephoto includes too little, but here’s where the digital potential can really save the day. Instead of taking one shot that compromises your vision, shoot several frames with a telephoto lens that records the entire scene. Later, with software programs like Photoshop’s Photomerge, you can stitch together a panorama that provides both the spaciousness and sweeping feeling of a wide-angle lens, while keeping the detail a telephoto records. When shooting images for a panorama remember to overlap each image by about one-third so that the program can seamlessly stitch the images together. And to later remember that what you were shooting was part of a panorama and not just a poorly composed image, start and end the panorama sequence by taking a shot with your hand covering the lens. In that way you’ll be reminded even months later that those dark frames signify something you were going to do in Photoshop … oh yeah, that panorama!

There’s a natural tendency when one comes ashore to race to the best spots to capture the defining subject found at a particular landing. We’d discourage doing so because each step you take can reveal a new photographic treasure if you simply slow down, absorb and let your eyes and mind soak in everything that’s there. A landing at Salisbury Plain on South Georgia will illustrate the point.

	A mother king penguin greets her chick at the edge of the colony on the Salisbury Plain, South Georgia.

The Salisbury Plain is famous for one of the most spectacular king penguin colonies in the world, with thousands of birds clustered along the beaches and hillsides in a mass that seems to go on for miles. The temptation is great to just rush to the colony’s edge and start shooting, but as soon as you step ashore there are shots to be made.

King penguins by the dozens surf in to the beach, joining others either waddling overland to the colony or about to dive back into the surf. Big-eyed elephant seal pups lay sprawled on the beach, and south polar skuas, giant petrel, and snowy sheathbills patrol the skies above. At your feet, as you hike towards the colony, the skeletons of unlucky seals lie half buried in the sand, eerie still lifes of fossils in the making, and the tracks of penguins etch dinosaur-like footprints in fresh mud flats. As you approach the colony, brown furry fireplugs waddle forth to greet you, the full-grown king chicks that have not yet molted into their adult plumage

As we write we’re getting the chills once again, not from the cold of the approaching winter, but from our thrilling memories. We can still hear the strident trumpeting of sky-pointing kings, and the twittering whistles of their chicks begging for food or a warm sheltering belly. We can hear the barks of Antarctic fur seals and the clacking of sturdy bills as black-browed albatrosses duel at their nests. We hear the hollow, honking blasts of bull elephant seals and the ominous sharp crack and rumbling roar as an iceberg calves and falls into the sea. In our mind’s eye we also see these scenes and we count the days until we return, to The South, one of the most enchanting spots on earth.

All images Copyright © Joe and Mary Ann McDonald