Untamed Images Blog

Juvenile and adult king penguins mingle in a large breeding colony below a backdrop of tussock grass and a hanging glacier at Gold Harbour on South Georgia Island.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, EF200-400mm f/4L IS USM at 200 mm, 1/30 sec at f/16, ISO 200
Click photo to see high resolution version.

The image featured in this post is one of my favorites from a landing on South Georgia Island last December. I used a telephoto lens to compress the dominant elements of the landscape into layers of varying color and texture. When standing on the shore at Gold Harbour, I could not help being struck by the awesome sight of glacial ice hanging from sheer rocky cliffs, while rivers of penguins flowed between hills covered in bright-green tussock grass. With this image, I hoped to capture the essence of the place in a semi-abstract composition of those dominant elements.

If you’d like to read more about the effects of perspective compression, or telephoto distortion, check out this wikipedia page.

A pair of king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) preen side-by-side as part of their courtship ritual. These were but two of approximately 500,000 birds found in and around the king penguin breeding colony at Saint Andrews Bay on South Georgia Island.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, EF200-400mm f/4L IS USM at 232 mm, 1/320 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400

Far too much time has passed since I last posted to this blog. The reasons surrounding my absence have been both good and bad. The bad: in early 2014 I was dealing with a health issue that forced me to limit my time at the keyboard. The good: beginning in August of last year, with my health improving, Alison and I began a whirlwind of travel in which we undertook three separate international trips, totaling roughly eleven weeks out of the country. The trips were outstanding and I was presented with (almost) too many photo opportunities!

It will take some serious effort for me to select all my favorites from the trips, but I must start somewhere, and I feel the image featured above will hold its own among the best. The photo was taken on our most recent journey — one in which we explored the Southern Ocean on a Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris expedition, with the M/V Ortelius serving as our home base for 25 days. I hope to share many more images in the weeks and months to come via blog updates and brand new image galleries, and I invite you to join me as a regular visitor. As always, I welcome your feedback via the Comments section here, or via email.