South Georgia Voyage Notes – 4:
In the whole voyage, there were just three days when we had perfectly sunny weather during the golden hour. While the overcast skies and snow had its own charm from a photography perspective, a clear morning sky with a great sunrise were rare, and one had to use these opportunities to create images in ideal lighting conditions. The morning of 9th November was one such day at St. Andrews Bay, an amazing site that plays home to hundreds of thousands of King Penguins After an aborted plan to land there a few days earlier , promise of a good weather forecast , the Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris team planned a dawn landing on the beach that entailed a 4 a.m Breakfast and a 4.30 a.m zodiac landing at the beach . The morning person in me sprung totally alive as I was on the first Zodiac out of the ship. Even during the Zodiac ride, we saw an amazing Alpine glow on the peaks in the Island. The site being a large one, one had to make decisions on what to look for in the crucial minutes of golden light available. The obvious thing to do would have been to walk as quickly as possible to the King Penguin colony, which involved half an hour of walking from the landing spot. I decided to wait for a bit at the landing spot itself hoping to get some subjects in with the glowing peaks as a backdrop. I was in luck, as a group of Kings slowly gathered and started walking towards me. I lay down waited with my wide angle. They got really close to me bathed in the golden glow of the morning Sun. Was very happy to get what I consider one of my best images of the trip- One where I planned, anticipated and got my shot. The other image where I made use of the light in a different way was when I started walking towards the colony. A group of moulting penguins were huddled with the backlight creating a rim effect on their profiles. Displaying these images here.
NEWS of Planet Earth 