Adelie penguins porpoise alongside the Zodiac as we make our way through a jumble of icebergs, their tuxedo-clad bodies sending up a continual wave of oohs and ahhs. Two humpback whales emerge onto the scene, peering out at the passengers who have come to visit their pristine domain. Tears spill down my facepart emotion, part wind chill–as I step from the Zodiac to my dream place, the Antarctic Peninsula.
Antarctica. It’s the coldest, driest, windiest continent on Earth. Yet thoughts of the place have always sent tingles up my spine, producing images of a far-off land of ice and penguins. Not just a few penguins, mind you, but vast rookeries of several thousand.
I love penguins, and although there are many places where they can be found in the Southern Hemisphere, perhaps the largest concentrations live in my dream place–Antarctica and the nearby islands of South Georgia and the Falklands–which were all part of my 18-day adventure with Marine Expeditions.
All three destinations require a lot of traveling to get to them, but they are definitely worth it. They are especially enticing if you enjoy grand scenery, if you thrill to wildlife (and lots of it) and if you have a minimum of camera gear.
A quest to photograph animal life often requires the use of long telephoto lenses, but not here in the southern part of the world, particularly Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic realms of South Georgia. Though I carried my big 600 mm lens with me, I spent most of my time behind my 75-300 zoom. A medium-length zoom is more than enough to capture frolicking penguins and the sea-going adventures of seals and whales. There even were times when my wide-angle 24 mm was my first choice.
My dream place may be the coldest place on Earth, but I’m actually more at home in warm weather. No doubt, my family and friends thought I would come home with a heavy dose of frostbite. But I didn’t, mainly because I dressed in layers, wore chemical heat packets in my gloves, and I pulled gawky overboots over my hiking boots so my feet wouldn’t freeze too much. (The temperatures in Antarctica during my visit at the end of February and early March–late summer in the Southern Hemisphere–was mainly in the 20s and low 30s.)
The cold didn’t affect my camera gear. I kept my cameras and small lenses in Ziploc bags, and I stuffed my 600 mm inside a big garbage bag. That worked to keep the spray off as I journeyed between the ship and land via Zodiac.
I can’t say I used any special tricks to get close to the penguins. In Antarctica, visitors must stay 15 feet away from the wildlife, but the penguins haven’t read the rules, so they approach and even touch visitors. Antarctica is free of land predators, so the penguins don’t fear visitors. I had penguins peck my gloves, while others watched my every move. One penguin seemed especially interested in photography, following closely as I changed film, clicked the shutter and so on.
Small to medium lenses easily captured the playfulness of penguins, the gross habits of some molting elephant seals, the sleepy behavior of resting seals and the lovely sculptures of a sea filled with icebergs.
