Seeing my first Iceberg is an experience I will never forget. We had been at sea travelling North from Iceland and up the South East coast of Greenland when I saw my first Iceberg. It wasn’t particularly large, but still it was my first. Its very hard to describe the experience of seeing an Iceberg the first time. Its a mixture of elation and nervousness, the adrenaline is pumping, I fumble for my camera, “Am I really here in open sea with Icebergs?”. “Should we be getting that close?” Within moments, years of experience photographing came into action and I was photographing away.
Looking back, it was without a doubt the most photographs I have ever taken on a single object in my life. As I said, the adrenalin was pumping.
Canon 5D Mark III 17-40 f/4 L, 17mm 1/500th ISO 200
Its a mixture of elation , and nervousness. The adrenaline is pumping, I fumbled for my camera “Am I really here in open sea with Icebergs?”.
Icebergs comes in some many different shapes and sizes, from small Growlers (baby icebergs), right up to large chunks of ice that have broken off the ice shelf over 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) long. They range from 15 storeys high to the size of a small car. Every Iceberg is a unique work of nature. No two icebergs are ever the same. So when you see an iceberg, its more than likely you’re seeing a shape and size of Iceberg that no one has seen before.
These every changing, melting, rocking, rolling, breaking up into pieces of ice are in a constant state of flux. The iceberg you saw just five minutes ago will have changed not long after leaving your sight. This constant changing nature of icebergs gives some insight into their nature and their origins. Icebergs are formed by compacted snow falling on icecaps thousands of years ago (up to 15,000 years ago). Icecaps, not unlike icebergs are in a constant state of movement and change, with large sections of the icecap meeting the ocean in fjords, carving off chunks of ice that become icebergs floating out to sea.
After seeing more than a few icebergs in my travels, I still feel a sense of elation when I get up and close to these majestic and more often than not enormous structures I still get a little giddy. I must admit I am a lot more discerning in what icebergs I will and won’t photograph and how many frames I will shoot of each iceberg I do point my camera at, but each and every iceberg is different and I look forward to capturing all the magnificent lines, curves, holes, dimples and striations of these magnificent natural structures and without fail I can be heard to uttering the phrase “Can we get closer?”.