Photography

An Antarctic experience no matter when or where is going to provide you with unrivalled photographic opportunities, and no matter what type of equipment you are using there will be the opportunity to capture once in a lifetime moments and experiences during the course of your explorations. 

There are a few points which you should consider when preparing for your expedition, the first is protecting your camera equipment. Travelling to and from the ship and cruising through the ice in search of wildlife you will be aboard zodiacs. These are very capable exploration vessels but there is always a chance of splash and spray anytime you are travelling in the zodiacs so we would recommend that you have a daypack and dry bag setup that contains all your photographic equipment keeping it dry no matter what the conditions.

Secondly you are going to be travelling to a remote area so it is important that you have redundancy in your equipement, ensure that you have spare batteries (these will run down more quickly in the cold) and also ample of memory or the ability to download your photos onto another device. 

In terms of the type of camera that you choose to take, this is very much a personal decision. There are a number of excellent options available, probably the first decision to consider is if you are going to be using a SLR camera or taking a smaller handheld style. The good news is that most of the wildlife will afford you excellent views and photographic opportunities, so even if you don't have the largest of lenses you will still be able to get some great photos. For the more serious photographer it is worth considering taking several lenses for your SLR camera to give you a broad range of options, our recomendation would be a wide angle lens for capturing the landscape plus a telephoto lens for bringing the wildlife really upclose. 

In our years of travelling to Antarctica and leading expeditions we would say that many of the best photos are the result of positioning and patience, once ashore you will have varying degrees of flexibility to explore the area and while there will be a lot to tempt you photographically don't be afriad to spend some time in one place observing behaviour and capturing the action.