Being the official photographer on a sailing expedition to explore the remote archipelago of Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic at 80 degrees north latitude sure does deliver some amazing shooting opportunities.
We were exploring Spitsbergen, the western island in the Svalbard archipelago, on the 88-foot sloop yacht “Shaman”. My job was to record the amazing arctic scenery, animals, birds, icebergs, and life on-board for the owner, an American who loved the remote and rarely-visited parts of the mudball planet.
He was a man who loved wearing hiking boats and exploring yet another deserted cove or unclimbed peak. I spent 10 years documenting his travels for two to five weeks at a time, once or twice a year. Besides Svalbard, we spent time exploring Tonga, Alaska, the sub Antarctic island of South Georgia, Patagonia, and more.
While exploring Svalbard, I was looking for a spot that I could go up the mast in a bosun’s chair and shoot the scene from 110 feet above the deck, and capture the arctic scene around and in front of us. We were motoring along through large icebergs in one of the many fjords on a wind-still and sunny day when I thought, “Now is my chance!”
The photo:
I suggested to the owner and captain that we slow right down, hoist me up the mast on one of the spare halyards (a rope that normally raises and lowers sails to the top of the mast) in a bosun’s chair — what is essentially a small canvas seat. They both agreed that it was a good spot and time to do this.
I took a handheld two-way radio with me so that I could talk to the captain and position the boat from my lofty perch up high, exactly where I wanted it. With no wind and swell, it was a fairly simple job to put the boat in the right spot, hold it there, and shoot the scene in front and below me.
The lens:
I used a Canon EOS-1N SLR camera with a Canon 14mm F2.8L lens set at F11 to capture the scene. The film I used was Fuji Velvia 50.
My reason for choosing for this super wide-angle lens is that I wanted to show everything, from my orange boots to the bow of the boat, including the iceberg and beyond. The rectilinear non-fisheye 14mm Canon lens was the lens for the job!
Apart from having a good sharp shot to record that moment for the owner, this same image ran on the cover of the Patagonia catalog cover, the cover of Cruising World magazine, and I won several awards with it. It has also brought many oohs and aahs from visitors viewing the image hanging in my gallery on Bannister’s Wharf in Newport, Rhode Island, with curious onlookers asking if those are my orange boots in the shot. My answer: “Yes, of course! How else would I get the shot?”
