An iceberg’s past

Canadian Arctic The history of an iceberg is always etched into the ice. But rarely is hard evidence of it’s birth so glaringly obvious the way it is in this detail shot of a piece of ice.

As I’m sure you’ve heard me say, an iceberg starts of as a glacier. A glacier starts off as layers of snow building up over hundreds or thousands of years along the mountain side. The tremendous weight of the snow on itself squeezes air out of the compacting ice and it becomes more clear and blue. So imagine a massive glacier slowly moving down a mountain side, the deepest part of the glacier is grinding away at the mountain, carving out U shaped valleys and pulverizing rock into dirt and silt. The ice at the bottom of the glacier is underneath hundreds of meters of ice, thus it’s the clearest, but it will also be exposed to the rock and dirt. When the glacier finally dumps itself into the ocean these ancient pieces of ice will carry remnants of the mountain with it.

That’s what you’re looking at here. A piece of a glacier that was actively carving away at the mountain that has made it’s way across the canadian arctic.

Photographic details: I had to poke my camera through a dark hole in an iceberg to get this, so it was relatively dark. I couldn’t shoot like I normally do, I just stuck my arms out with my camera and hoped for the best. Yeah professional photographers blindly shoot and do guesswork too! I think I would have made it easier on myself if I used a higher ISO of 400 or so instead of 100.

1/50s f/5.6 ISO100 260mm

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Inuit boy in seal skin

Grise Fjord, Ellesmere Island, Canadian ArcticFrom the kylefoto of the day at http://www.kylefoto.com

Grise Fjord in Inuktitut is Aujuittuq (ᐊᐅᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ), meaning "place that never thaws". What a fitting name for a hamlet that is often seen surrounded by ice even in the summer months on the northernmost island in Canada. We were arriving from our expedition ship and were greeted by the locals after we navigated a maze of sea ice grounded on the shore by the tide. Among them was an RCMP officer who was originally born in the Grenadines in the Caribbean, we joked about the stark contrast of his previous life and now. Even though the people here are mainly inuit, they are also canadians, and for the most part they dress just like me. But for the sake of preserving history and traditions, for special occasions they will put on traditional clothing.

The intricacy and beauty of this traditional wear is stunning. Made entirely of seal skin, every piece of the animal has been used for something. A close look at the crafting and stitching reveals how much work has gone into the making of these. Thousands of years of trial, error and inuit ingenuity has gone into the design of these beautiful, functional and life preserving attire. Another danger out here is the harsh glare of the arctic sun, it’s magnified by the amount of high albedo snow and ice of this landscape. The inuit have developed visors made of bone, with tiny slits letting in just enough light to see but not so much to get snow blindness.

Photographic details: We had the opportunity to photograph these people indoors inside the community hall, but we preferred a much more fitting environment. Mere meters from the hall we had the shore line covered in grounded sea ice. The harsh sunlight would have been too much for this shot so we put him in the shade of this ice. In hindsight the extreme brightness of the ice in the background would have been better off if I had gone the HDR route. Over exposed highlights in the background aren’t ideal, although not important. Despite those shortcomings this photograph isn’t about getting perfect technical photographic statistics, it’s about the subject, this amazing inuit child and the grand history that his garments represent, and that’s what the exposure is geared for, at the very least he is perfectly exposed.

1/200s f/5.0 ISO50 100mm

90 Degree iceberg

Canadian Arctic What am I talking about with this 90 degree iceberg? I’m not talking about temperature, I’m talking about angles.

Look at the striations on the iceberg, how the lines in the ice are going straight up and down. Those are the layers of snow that have been compacted into ice while this ice was still being formed on a mountainside as a glacier. Over hundreds, even thousands of years each layer of snow is piled on top of each other until the tremendous pressure compresses it into ice.

Because the ice normally stays more or less upright while it’s still a glacier, these lines should normally be horizontal. Once the glacier ends up dumping itself into the ocean the ice will bob around, melt, break apart, and in doing so this newly formed iceberg will rotate and change orientation. Thus the ice is now shifted 90 degrees from it’s original orientation.

Now go into my master collection of photos and look at every other iceberg and you will obsessively look at these striations and assess the history of the iceberg, you will never be able to unsee it, muahaha!

Photographic details: Nothing special is going on here for camera settings, I was more looking for unique and interesting shapes and this one caught my eye. Sometimes I don’t look at a subject as a whole and I just focus on the interesting detailed portions.

1/160s f/5.0 ISO50 170mm

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Heavenly arctic rays

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic It was a grey day up in the norwegian arctic as we tromped around the snow and rocks in search of arctic enlightenment. It was nice to stretch my legs and explore the contemplative landscape of the north, but I still felt like I was holding my breath, like I was waiting for something to happen. I didn’t know what I was expecting but I was going to be ready for it.

As our group walked between a valley towards an old hut the view of the mountains in the distance greeted us. This is when the sky opened up to reveal these beautiful rays of light pouring out of the grey clouds. Everyone just stopped to look in.

This is where I was glad to have other people in this photograph. The woman in purple on the right is also taking a picture, further expressing this is a scene worth photographing as her shadow is cast behind her like a spectator of a nuclear explosion.

Photographic details: Shot in raw I was able to get all the details I wanted in this scene with one exposure. I had to darken down the brighter portions of the image, and brighten up others to get the photograph to look much more like how I saw it. The magic with shooting and processing in raw with lightroom is that I can correct the mistakes that my camera makes. It’s nowhere near as intelligent and advanced as the human brain and eye; a photograph needs human direction to be a human photograph. Sure it’s nice when a photo comes out looking perfect without a bit of processing, but most of the time an untouched photograph is something that is just done by a robot. I am not a robot.

I shot this at f16 to make sure everything is as sharp as can be for this landscape photo.

Canon 5D Mark II 1/80s f/16.0 ISO100 16mm

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Polar Bear in the mist

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic Scooting around in the fog in our zodiacs we were slicing through very thin sea ice up in the arctic. Always cognizant that a polar bear could be anywhere we were keeping a careful eye out. The best thing about travelling with other people is that what would be one pair of eyes is now 10 pairs scouring the misty veil that surrounds us. I was more concentrating on not hitting a large iceberg while driving the zodiac when someone exclaimed “I saw a blob move over there!” It took nearly a minute to fully locate this figure until it popped up from the surrounding white and stood out like an anvil on the horizon.

Photographic Details: It was relatively dark out there with the heavy fog obscuring a lot of the light. I bumped it up to ISO 200 to increase the sensitivity but used the slowest shutter speed and most open aperture I could. I knew I would have to process this image a lot to get the details back, and a higher ISO could present a bit of a problem in this regard as it degrades the image the higher I go

1/400s f/5.6 ISO200 400mm

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Winter Wonderland

Outside Waterton National Park, Alberta, Canada This beautiful sight was greeting me on a very special winter day. The air had enough moisture in it to form crystals of snow and ice on the trees. Later the snow fell so lightly that it all got stuck on everything it touched, making the tiniest twig expand to 10 times it’s normal size with the marshmallowy snow stuck on it. The tiniest breath of air or shake of a tree would dislodge any snow from this delicate landscape.

Photographic Details: The most important factor was setting the aperture at f/14 to get this landscape photo as crisp as possible. Everything is sharp but the simplicity of the image takes away from the distraction that a lot of detail might bring to it.

1/100s f/14.0 ISO100 35mm Every photo in my smugmug is now 50% off until Dec 25th with the code: WELOVEWINTER

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Two seasoned fox

Norwegian Arctic: Svalbard In the winter, the arctic is a veritable snowy world covered in white. And likewise many animals including the Arctic fox has a white coat to blend into their surroundings. In the summer months, the land returns to a brownish red hue, and so does the arctic fox! This little guy was photographed while he was in transition to his summer coat, with a patch of white lingering on his body and tail.

Photographic Details: It was such a joy to see such a different style on a fox. This guy popped up out of nowhere and was out of there before I could get a decent close up shot of him. The best I could do was line him up with the rule of thirds and incorporate the background to express that he was in this arctic environment. I kept him on the lower right hand corner to give him room to run into the photo; the white of the snow actually has minute details but I chose to leave them as inconspicuous as they are to make the fox pop out of the frame more.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II 1/500s f/8.0 ISO200 400mm

For #wildlifewednesday

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Skier by night

Outside Wheeler HutFrom the holiday collection at http://www.kylefoto.com

It was an epic day of backcountry skiing in the mountains of BC. The higher we climbed the bigger our ski down would be. This is where we made the mistake of not keeping together and not fully monitoring the energy of everyone in the group. We ended up taking much longer than we expected to get down. You have to think of the whole group as one person, and if anyone is tired you must only go at the pace and distance comfortable for them. This is where being prepared is handy, we had head lamps with us in case we ended up skiing in the night, and that’s just what happened. Lo and behold it was cool to see the skiiers with the lamps on their heads at night and I got someone to pose.

Photographic details: The light was quite dim, so I needed to let in as much light as possible. Shot hand held with a slow shutter speed of 1/30th of a second and f2.8 and a whopping iso of 12800. My camera was now sensitive enough to gather enough light from the lamps and and the last minute of blue hour. Drastic noise reduction was used in Lightroom to compensate for the distortion of using such a high iso but it comes out quite nice!

1/30s f/2.8 ISO12800 35mm Every photo in my smugmug is now 50% off until Dec 25th with the code: WELOVEWINTER

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Diddle Berry

Falkland IslandsFrom the holiday collection http://www.kylefoto.com

This bright red berry found in the Falkland Islands as well as all over Argentina and Chile always brings me a smile. One of the first times I came across this I was actually with my mother who loved the bright red colours. It’s called the Diddle Dee berry or the Red Crowberry and to be honest, I think it’s an acquired taste. I always thought it was funny how my mother skipped the “dee” and simply called it the “Diddle Berry”. Locals here often turn it into jam, most likely for their crumpets.

Photographic Details: Photos like this aren’t usually my style, I often prefer a sharper image with much more detail. But This image has appealed to my mother and many other people once they saw it. Sometimes it’s just about the splash of colour and the memories behind the image. And if people love it, I’m not going to complain!

Canon 5D 1/100s f/2.8 ISO200 100mm

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2012 Calendar and Holiday Print Sale!

My 2012 Calendar is here!

I put some of my top images there for you to gaze upon monthly. The calendar is 20% off right now and ground shipping is guaranteed to arrive before christmas until December 7th!

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Wheeler hut marshmallow land

From the holiday collection http://www.kylefoto.comB.C. Canada

Wheeler hut is one of the most accessible alpine huts in B.C. Canada. That being said it was covered enough of the legendary marshmallowy winter powder to get me to sink to my chest. There was no hope of me getting far enough outside the hut to get a photo without my skis on. Setting up my tripod to get this 30 second exposure was also a challenge, as my poles kept sinking in the snow. The warm glow of the hut windows are welcoming as the final minutes of the "blue hour" past sunset wained into darkness.

Canon 5D Mark II 30s f/2.8 ISO800 50mm

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Arctic moonrise

Canadian high arcticfrom the blog http://www.kylefoto.com

Later in august the sun will start setting below the horizon only to pop up a few hours later. The land of the midnight sun is no longer that and darkness begins to take hold again. The moon was a poignant highlight in the sky this night as we looked across the desolate arctic landscape.

Photographic details: Being so dark out I had to use a slow shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. The expanse of this landscape called for a wide angle lens, making the slow shutter speed easier to handle as a tripod was out of the question standing above the vibrating engine room of the ship.

1/30s f/5.6 ISO200 35mm

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Sushi of the North

Qaanaaq (Thule), Greenland Up in one of the farthest north settlements in Greenland lies the small town of Qaanaaq. Here there is no shortage of bright colours. In addition to the bright housing as seen in the background there is the delicious sight of fresh arctic char hanging to dry. At first I was turned off by this, but when I was invited to try a piece I peeled a cube off and to my delight it was like the most fresh fatty sashimi I had ever had. The look of glee that shone on the wrinkled face of the local man was returned by me as I exclaimed “mmmmm” with a big smile to ensure my gratitude wasn’t lost in translation.

Photographic Details: Shot at f3.2 at a close range with my 50mm prime lens this image had a very shallow depth of field, ensuring the viewer focuses mainly on the texture of the cut pieces of meat. 1/125s f/3.2 ISO50 100mm

Ice Haiku

Canadian Arctic from a glacier the ice steals away the warmth yet I feel comfort

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Arctic Wake

West coast of Greenland, 77° North Under way along the calm seas of the arctic, the fractal resonance of the ship’s wake created this beautiful pattern as we made a turn. As an artist would say, this image has “movement”. Your eyes have a lot to do in this image as they start at the bottom left of the image then curve around to the right and up towards the poignant icebergs floating merrily on the surreal horizon off the calm shores of Greenland.

Photographic details: I used an aperture of f7 to have a higher depth of field. But I still needed a shutter speed of 1/250 of a second in order to prevent the water from being blurred in too much motion, as I wanted to preserve the texture of the waves.

Canon 5D 1/250s f/7.1 ISO50 170mm

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Coburg island incognito

Coburg island, Canadian Arctic The arctic can be one of the most desolate environments. The landscapes have a way of amplifying loneliness and introspection while still keeping you in awe of the harsh reality of this cold northern desert.

The cool arctic doesn’t hold much moisture, therefore it doesn’t snow very often, giving many places in the north the same amount of precipitation of the sahara desert. So when the fog rolls in I was sure to relish this sight as this dramatic island is shrouded in a blanked of mist.

These cliffs are homes to many species of birds who depend on the steepness and hostility of these cliffs to protect their eggs from land dwelling predators. Many birds lay pear shaped eggs ensuring that if an egg was to roll, it would roll back into the nest instead of the cliff. Being one of the most important sites in the arctic it’s home to over 220,000 pairs of nesting birds.

Photographic Details: Taken in the early morning it was somewhat dim out, I had to use a relatively low shutterspeed of 1/160th of a second, handheld from a ship that was bobbing in the ocean, where a tripod wouldn’t be much of an aid. Canon 5D 1/160s f/7.1 ISO100 100mm

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Arctic Kittiwake Iceberg

Canadian Arctic The deep blues in this ice is a result of the light travelling through the dense ice long enough for the red and warm tones to be absorbed by the ice, leaving behind only the cool colours for our eyes to see. There is still quite a lot of white being reflected by the ice, and they act like big reflectors. This white ice extends under the water allowing the light to bounce back out of the water to be coloured even more blue by the water, as water is much more dense it’s power to change the colour of light is much more intense.

Kittiwakes rest on the top of this berg, peppering it with character. If I had to choose I would always have some animal on these things, it visually proves to me that as hostile as these places are every corner of our big beautiful world harbours life.

Photographic details: This overcast light was quite dim, having to use a slow shutterspeed of 1/100th of a second and f5.6 to let in as much light as possible. Driving the zodiac it’s difficult to manoeuvre, as boats don’t have brakes a steady hand on both the tiller and camera is required.

Canon 5D 1/100s f/5.6 ISO50 100mm

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No budget martini

Taken in my back yard when I was a 17 year old kid in high school, year 2000See the before shots at http://www.kylefoto.com

In high school I had the absolute privilege of receiving a whopping 3 megapixel Olympus camera with a 16 megabyte memory card as a christmas gift. My parents saw that I loved photography and sprung for this little gem of a camera. Little did I know this little bundle of glass and circuitry would inspire and take me on such great journeys as it has.

Photographic Details: I didn’t have any fancy equipment so I did the very best with what I could. I knew I needed a black background for the look I wanted. I took one of my moms nice black jackets and set it up outside as the background and floor of the shoot.

I had no flashes, bounces, fancy lenses or anything else besides my camera. Instead of lights I used the bright overcast sky outside and a wide open aperture of f1.8. This let in enough light for me to shoot at the fastest shutter speed available on this camera, 1/800th of a second. I then poured water into the martini glass and shot as many photos as possible, freezing the action. In addition I took photos of a toothpick olive, and various streams of water.

After selecting my favourite photos of each stream of water I brought the images into paint shop pro. I don’t think it had any masking features but I used the eraser tool to delete the background. I then replaced the background with solid black and added a touch of highlights, combining each item on a layer to get the final image!

I want to prove to you that fancy equipment wasn’t necessary 11 years ago and isn’t now. Even though this image does have many flaws and isn’t fully up to my standards, my brother used the image in one of his marketing assignments and got an A!

#Foodfriday

Stingray feeding

Cayman Islands, Caribbean This is a wild sting ray in it’s natural environment, which is distinctly different from the other photos I’ve been showing you.

Stingrays feed in many areas of the oceanic environment, but sometimes they bury themselves in the sand. Although they can’t see well when they do this, they use their sensitive smell and electro receptors just like sharks do to locate mollusks and suck them up. Adequately crushing them with their strong jaws and teeth, protruding their mouth if they need to.

That’s what this stingray seemed to be doing, all the activity grabs the attention of nearby fish and scavengers, hoping to get some scraps or find something that’s dug up in the sand.

Photographic Details:Canon 20D Shutter Priority 1/200s f/16.0 ISO200 22mm (35mm eq:35.2mm)

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