Hornsund, Svalbard, Norway
Yesterday we flew from Oslo to board the good ship Endeavour in Longyearbyen, and so began our Photo Expedition around the archipelago of Svalbard. During the night (the clock said that it was night, but the bright daylight of the midnight sun argued otherwise) we sailed southward to enter Hornsund, a large, glacially-carved gash into the west coast of the main island of Spitsbergen. Here, whalers plied their trade in the 17th Century, and later hunter-trappers spent long, cold, dark Arctic winters in pursuit of polar bears. This morning we found Hornsund filled with a dark grey fog—perfect conditions to initiate our series of lecture-seminars on techniques of photography. We moved farther into Hornsund toward Samarinbreen—the Samarin Glacier—and were greeted by a beautiful ground-to-ground Arctic rainbow. Where there is a rainbow, there must be sun. We found that as well, shining down on us through a glorious blue hole. Samarinbreen in one of the countless glaciers that descend from the mountains to the sea, rivers of ice that have carved the deep valleys, now flooded by the sea, and left behind the sharp peaks that give Spitsbergen its name (in Dutch, given by Willem Barents in 1596). We spent our afternoon cruising along the sheer face of Samarinbreen in Zodiacs, listening for the sounds of the glacier as ice formed in the mountains completes its journey to the sea, and admiring the myriad forms of the glacial ice and the birds that find their food and nesting habitat here in the High Arctic. Many an image was captured, in the mind, on film, and in pixels for those who embrace the new digital technology.
Yesterday we flew from Oslo to board the good ship Endeavour in Longyearbyen, and so began our Photo Expedition around the archipelago of Svalbard. During the night (the clock said that it was night, but the bright daylight of the midnight sun argued otherwise) we sailed southward to enter Hornsund, a large, glacially-carved gash into the west coast of the main island of Spitsbergen. Here, whalers plied their trade in the 17th Century, and later hunter-trappers spent long, cold, dark Arctic winters in pursuit of polar bears. This morning we found Hornsund filled with a dark grey fog—perfect conditions to initiate our series of lecture-seminars on techniques of photography. We moved farther into Hornsund toward Samarinbreen—the Samarin Glacier—and were greeted by a beautiful ground-to-ground Arctic rainbow. Where there is a rainbow, there must be sun. We found that as well, shining down on us through a glorious blue hole. Samarinbreen in one of the countless glaciers that descend from the mountains to the sea, rivers of ice that have carved the deep valleys, now flooded by the sea, and left behind the sharp peaks that give Spitsbergen its name (in Dutch, given by Willem Barents in 1596). We spent our afternoon cruising along the sheer face of Samarinbreen in Zodiacs, listening for the sounds of the glacier as ice formed in the mountains completes its journey to the sea, and admiring the myriad forms of the glacial ice and the birds that find their food and nesting habitat here in the High Arctic. Many an image was captured, in the mind, on film, and in pixels for those who embrace the new digital technology.
