National Geographic Expedition to Antarctica

This is the first “Where’s Jay” column, in which Jay Dickman will post a group of images or a single image, from his recent travels, along with the story behind the images.
This year has been busy, intense and hectic, and I would not want it any other way.  I’ll post the first trip of the year, Antarctica, with this group of images.

Sometimes the “photo-gods” have to be with you, as was the case in this series.  It was several days into the first of two National Geographic/Lindblad Expeditions Antarctica trips, having started in Ushaia, Argentina.  We boarded the Explorer, the newest ship in the Lindblad fleet, a beautiful, state-of-the-art 1A ice-class expedition ship.  We had made a landing at Paulet Island, exploring the area where Dr. Otto Nordenskjold and members of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 had been forced to winter in a hurriedly built stone hut.

One naturalist had offered to motor me around in a Zodiac to photograph penguins and the incredible ice formations found in the icebergs and smaller ice, click here for an interesting definition of ice-types found in the Antarctic Sound.

I was photographing a beautifully-sculptured “Bergy Bit”, a small iceberg under 16′ tall, when quite suddenly-and unexpectedly-an adelie penguin exploded straight out of the 28 degree water, up on the side of the ice…tried vainly to gain purchase on the ice, almost getting a toe-hold, but slid back into the waters…all captured in this series. Olympus E3, 50-200 lens @ 108mm, 100 ISO, 1/500th @ f7.1