Well, it’s only taken me about 14 months, but I’ve just published a gallery of “icescapes” - there’s not much land to be seen - from January 2013 in the Antarctic Peninsula.

The weather was stubbornly grim pretty much all the time, which suited me just fine. Bright sunlight is bad news when you’re photographing ice. And anyway, it’s the Antarctic, it’s supposed to be grim. All photos were taken using my satisfyingly unfashionable and “obsolete” Olympus E-5, which didn’t skip a beat in the wind, rain and snow.

Some of the photo titles bear homage to my constant polar soundtrack, Biosphere’s gorgeous “Substrata” and “Cirque”. The rest I just made up, as usual.

I’m gradually building up quite a large library of Antarctica literature, science and photography books, but my most recent acquisition is easily amongst the best.

“The Last Ocean - Antarctica’s Ross Sea Project”, by John Weller, caught my eye in a fairly highbrow Art bookshop, the sort that usually only stocks books with blurry, grim, preferably black & white photos.  Certainly nothing as common as nature photography.

But The Last Ocean _is_ nature photography. Actually, it is extremely good nature photography, possibly the best contemporary Antarctic photography I’ve ever seen. John Weller’s photography is restrained, giving the land, the sea, and its native inhabitants space to breathe. Unlike so much other work, these photographs are about their subject, not about where the photographer has been or how hard he/she can push the saturation slider.  They are sometimes dramatic, but it’s never forced. This photography draws you in and captivates you. It doesn’t make you go “Wow! Great Capture! You must have a great camera!”, but rather it demands that you linger and let you eyes explore. It’s meditative, subtle and thoroughly gorgeous.

But that’s not the end of The Last Ocean by any means.  Photography is only half the story. The book is full of excellent, reflective essays on the Ross Sea ecosystem, and anecdotes about making the photographs. In fact I found that I had to read the book twice, once for the essays, and once for the photos. And then I read it again, twice.  The essays are not of the clingy, preachy, hand-wringing variety one might fear, but rather are informative, scientifically literate and very readable.

The Last Ocean is associated with the wider Ross Sea Project, a voluntary organisation started in 2004 to promote the establishment of a marine protected area (MPA) in order to conserve the pristine qualities of the Ross Sea, Antarctica. There’s also a film. But start with the book. You won’t regret it.

And if you happen to browsing Orell Füssli’s art book section in Zürich, watch out, they may still have some copies. They’re near the blurry, grainy black & white naked ladies books.

Following on from last October’s triumph, I have another photo featured in the official Olympus Magazine.

It’s a bit like back when I was something like 10 years old, I had a letter published in “Look & Learn”. Only then I got a badge and a box of coloured pencils or something.  Now all I get is to bask in the glory.

I made about 6500 photos in 2013. Seems rather a lot. The trouble it’s a lot easier to amass photos, especially digital photos, than it is to edit them. I still have a considerable number of digital photos from Patagonia in January 2013 to go through, although I’ve done most of the film scanning.  This last year, apart from local stuff, I’ve photographed in Argentina, Antarctica, Venice (twice), Tuscany (twice) and Sardinia. As for the local stuff, well my collections from the Verzasca and Maggia valleys, as well as various other areas in Ticino, have carried on growing.

It’s difficult to come up with a “top 10” out of all that, but there are a few which stick in my mind, and so which I could qualify as my favourites for 2013.

This first shot was taken in a blind alley in Venice on March 1st.  I’ve made a big print of it and I find it quite captivating. By sheer chance I stumbled across the exact same scene last week when I was back there for a few days. Typically for Venice, I was nowhere near where I thought I was.

There are a couple of “panoramic” shots of Antarctica which I’m fairly satisfied with.  The one below competes with a few others for my favour, but at the moment it’s top of the pile.

And that’s it.

Of course, there are many more photos which I’ve made over the year which I’m pleased with, but no others have really gotten under my skin. Partly because I just haven’t given them time to do so, partly because many work better as part of a set, but perhaps also because churning out the same pictures year in, year out, with slight technical and technique improvements (I hope) doesn’t really excite much.  I could easily add to this list and make a “Top 10” but I’d be forcing the issue.

Probably we all take far, far too many photos, and this starts to dilute the experience of being there, wherever, or whenever, “there” may be. I think it is better to move away from “capturing the moment” and closer to “enjoying the moment”. Obviously if photography is a means to make a living then the parameters might be different. But when it is rather a scramble to produce some fleeting, intangible popularity through social media “likes”, then maybe there’s a danger of completely disconnecting with the very motives that drive many of of us to photography in the first place.

And with that cheerful thought, my best wishes for 2014.  😊

A while back I made a bit of a mistake. I wrote about Stuart Klipper, and in particular his book, “The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole”, here, and I was pretty enthusiastic about it. The problem is I didn’t realise quite how rare it is, and a few days after my post, coincidentally or not, Amazon and all other vendors (for example the excellent Longitude Books) were out of stock.  Bugger.  I did manage to get Amazon.de to take an order, but every now and again they send me a stream of undecipherable Germanic e-commerce babble which I assume means they’d love to take my money but they can’t. 

So I was pretty surprised not to mention happy to discover Amazon UK suggesting that I buy it new from a 3rd party vendor for just £7.22. And it’s just arrived.

Over the past few days I’d been enjoying Joseph Holko’s Antarctic images, and feeling a little intimidated by them.  They’re dramatic, full of contrast and vivid flashes of colour, and sharp enough to cut through steel. They grab attention. I despair of ever being able to get anywhere near this standard.  But although I don’t in way want to dismiss them, I’m not sure I ever actually remember Antarctica looking like that.  Antarctica looks the way Stuart Klipper photographs it. It’s mysterious, unattainable, incomprehensible in it’s alien vastness. It’s really not the world of highly saturated dramatic icebergs and penguins that we’re getting increasingly subjected to. Stuart Klipper lets Antarctic speak to us, rather than impose his vision on it, and it makes a huge difference. He doesn’t go the uninvolved, dispassionate lengths of the more conceptualist art landscape crowd, there’s still a considerable emotional attachment involved, but you get the impression of a photographer who has taken his time to take a long look before pressing the shutter release.

Of course, Holko will sell, and Klipper probably doesn’t much. And Holko is a photographer, while Klipper has at least one foot in the “artist” camp. These are just observations, Joseph Holko is a fantastic photographer, and I’m just using his work to contrast with Stuart Klipper’s, I’m not being judgemental. But although I certainly don’t claim any artistic merit for myself, I do feel that my own photography is somewhat validated by Klipper’s. Sure, I’ve tried to go for the in-vogue ultra-impact approach myself, but I’m not comfortable with it and I think it shows. Which is probably why in my heart of hearts I prefer my XPan work. Not specifically because of the format, but because it’s on slide film, and there’s very limit scope in pushing that beyond what-you’ve-got-is-what-you-get.

Anyway, I’ve got a book to read tonight.