Dave Hartley

Images of icebergs in the Scotia Sea and the Antarctic Peninsula are now online. You can access them through my Galleries page or directly via this link.

Images of the wildlife at Palo Alto Baylands are now online. The images can be accessed via the Galleries page or via this link.

This is an account of our worst journey in the world, not the worst which I’ll mention at the end.

On Friday, January 4th of this year, we were scheduled to fly out of San Francisco. Our first flight would be to Dallas, then the same day we would fly Dallas to Buenos Aires, arriving in Argentina early on the 5th. We would then cross the city to the domestic airport and catch a flight to Ushuaia, which is at the bottom of Argentina, and is where the ship was leaving for our trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and Antarctica. As we would be setting sail on Monday January 7th, that gave us a day in Ushuaia to take photos at Tierra del Fuego National park, enjoy some great Argentinian steak, papas fritas, and one or two glasses of red wine. That was the plan, and we were pretty excited about sailing the Southern Ocean again.

Friday morning came and we awoke to wild weather conditions. Torrential rain and strong winds. The news was all about the “Winter Storm”. It was the worst I had seen it in ten years. To make matters worse, before we left for the airport, our lounge ceiling started to leak by the window. It must have been coming in from upstairs. Well, nothing we could do about it and we had to leave it to my parents who were visiting to sort it out (thanks Mum & Dad!). We jumped in the taxi and headed down the 101 to SFO. The driving conditions were atrocious, and I was getting really worried.

Once we got to the airport, check in went pretty smooth, although they said there would be a thirty minute delay; not bad as we had a reasonably long layover in Dallas. However, once we got to the gate area we started to see all the delays piling and we began to get anxious. The flight departure kept on getting pushed back further and further. It got to the point where we were sure that we wouldn’t make our connecting flight. Speaking to the American representative (who did a great job under the pressure), she re-booked our flight to Buenos Aires for the next day, which was fine as we had a spare day. We decided to still fly out of San Francisco that day as the weather was forecast to be bad the following day.

I called Expedia who I had booked out flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuia. For some reason, I started to loose my voice which made traversing though the automated calling system complete hell. After being on hold for ages, I eventually spoke to a representative about re-booking our internal Argentinian flight. After a long time, he told me that all the flights were fully booked for the next four days! He tried speaking to the airline directly but they kept on cutting him off. We then found that we could get a flight which stopped at every airport on the way down to Ushuaia, so that looked promising, until we found that due to the daylight savings that had just been introduced in Argentina, we would not be able to cross the city in time to make our flight from the domestic airport. Our only other option was to see if we could get a flight to Santiago (Chile), then to Punta Arenas (bottom of Chile) and then to Ushuaia. At this point, our flight to Dallas was called and we boarded knowing then we hadn’t any guaranteed way of getting to our final destination. We had been staring at oblivion and it looked like we had lost the whole trip.

We got to Dallas around 9:30pm and immediately spoke to the AA representative. We then saw one of the managers who booked us for a flight the next day from Dallas to Miami, then onto Santiago, then Punta Arenas, and finally, Ushuaia! We were extremely happy and didn’t mind the fact that our bags were impounded as they were checked through to Buenos Aires (for the flight the next evening). All we had to do was get them the next morning and recheck them.

We decided to get up early the next morning, get to the airport, get our bags and recheck them before the terminal got busy. We had to wait an hour for our bags to be found, they were rechecked, and we waited at the gate, nervous in case the flight was delayed. We left on time and arrived in Miami without any problems. At first we couldn’t see our flight to Santiago, as for some reason they weren’t putting it up, but eventually it did and we boarded without any problems. We left about fifteen minutes late and I was twiddling my thumbs, anxious for us to get off the ground as I didn’t want to miss our internal flight in Chile. As were taxiing for take off, I was looking at the monitor which gave information about the flight and was horrified to see that we were arriving in Santiago much later then planned. What was the issue? Was it due to the daylight savings?

I stressed about it for over an hour on the flight. I also heard other people talking about it. Then, all of a sudden, the arrival time completely changed! It was back to the originally scheduled time! I was so happy. I can only guess that the wrong information was out into the computer.

We arrived in Santiago and I decided to hang around the baggage claim for a little bit, even though our bags had been checked through to Ushuaia. After a while, the lines through the customers started to get longer so we left the baggage claim area and went through to our gate. No worries as our bags were checked through.

Our flight left Santiago on schedule and we arrived in Punta Arenas. We had to get off the plane to get our passports stamped to show we had exited Chile and we then got back on the plane. When we arrived in Ushuaia it was an immense relief; it was late Sunday afternoon, with the ship leaving the next evening.

As we were at the back of the plane, it took a long time to get through Argentinian immigration. By this time, all the bags had come off and the baggage carousel was stopped. I found one bag, but where was the other one? Well, it hadn’t made it. Speaking to the customer service people, they didn’t know where the bag was but they would find it. The big problem was that there are only three flights a week from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia. So, even though they said the bag would arrive on Wednesday, the ship was departing on Monday!

We got to the hotel in a mixed state of mind. One side was elated as we’d reached our destination after stirring into oblivion the days before, but we were frustrated that one of our bags was missing! This meant that we only had one tripod between the two of us!

Once we got to the hotel, we quickly opened the bag that had made it and did a quick check of the contents to see what we needed to buy. We found that I had packed so carefully that I had no clothes from my waist down! That’s right, instead of dividing the clothes between the two bags, I had somehow managed to put all my below the waist clothes into the bag that was missing. We also had no toiletries. We quickly went out shopping. Even though it was a Sunday, we were lucky that several stores were open, which allowed us to get ski pants, underwear, socks, gloves, hats, toiletries etc. We still managed to have a late evening meal - steak, papas fritas and wine.

On Monday morning we discovered our watches were an hour behind, so we had to quickly get our bags out of the room and ready for them to be taken to the ship. We did some last minute shopping which included getting contact lenses, renting boots, and buying the best tripod I could find in Uhsuaia (this doesn’t say much). Actually, I was very unhappy about the tripod situation, and was cursing in the camera stores when I was trying the various tripods out and seeing how clunky they were. We had spent a lot of money for this trip and one of the most important pieces of equipment was missing (I also didn’t have polarizers, cables releases etc). In fact, I was pretty jealous when I met the other passengers as they were bustling with excitement and the all had tripods! Still, we had made it down so we would have to make the best of the situation.

On boarding the ship, we found that one of the passengers had had his camera bag stolen at the domestic airport in Buenos Aires. A number of people from the group had been standing around, waiting to go through security, when they heard someone shouting. Everybody turned around to see what the commotion was, and in a split second, someone came in and stole one of the backpacks on the floor. Obviously, the thieves worked as a team where one would cause a distraction whilst the other stole something. I can’t imagine how that must have felt. At least they had a spare body (although not as good as their main body) and passengers on the ship had spare lenses for them to borrow.

As we departed Ushuaia, heading down the Beagle Channel, I was talking to one of the passengers and found that they had brought a spare tripod with them, together with a small ball head! They were kind to let me use it on the trip (thanks Jason! I owe you one). I never used the tripod that I had bought in Ushuaia; in the end I gave it to the girl who worked behind the ships bar as she was really keen on birds and interested in photography.

The rest of the trip turned out to be great, and I came back with some fantastic images. Check out the photos via the Galleries page, under Antarctica 2008.

When we checked in at Ushuaia for our flight home, we picked up the missing bag that had been sitting there for over twenty days!

So, the lessons learned on this journey to the bottom of South America:

1. If you are going on a big trip, make sure that you leave plenty of time to get there in case of delays. Next time I go to Ushuaia, I’m getting there at least two days early. This also gives some time for your bags to arrive if they get lost.
2. Make sure your cell phone battery is fully charged. Ideally, take several phones or at least a charger.
3. Make sure you have all the travel contact numbers in case you need to call around.
4. Book all your flight at the same time. This makes it much easier if flights need to be re-booked.
5. Ideally check before hand what other routes you might be able to take if your current route is fully booked. In our case, we were very lucky that we could catch a flight via a different country.
6. Carefully pack your suitcases. If you have two cases, make sure you split the clothes between the bags. For example, one pair of socks in this one, one pair of socks in the other one.
7. You can actually get by with much less clothes than you think!
8. Pack your polarizer and cable release in you camera bag.

For us, this was our worst travel experience, with a lot of stress. However, it pales in comparison to “The Worst Journey in the World” by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. This book is an account of the authors trip to obtain Emperor Penguin eggs in the middle of winter and also Scotts tragic journey to the South Pole. This book is an incredible read and highly recommended.

On our recent trip to Belize, we spent two and a half days at Half Moon Caye. This is owned by the Belize Audubon Society and is a sanctuary for Red-Footed Boobies and Frigate Birds. Each morning, the Audubon residents would check the sanctuary to see if any chicks had fallen out of their nests. The adult birds will not tend to these chicks and so the birds are rescued, raised and eventually released into the wild. When we visited, there were two chicks that had been rescued and these hung out by the resident accommodation. We went to photograph the two chicks but the photographic environment was not optimal to say the least. One chick was hanging out by the building with the other standing on the building steps. To make matters worse, the background was a mixture of wooden building and bright background caused by the fact that the building was raised. The picture below gives you an idea of what we saw when we first turned up.

At first I thought there was no decent shot in the current setting but decided to take a few shots anyway. Looking through the view finder, I originally tried to put the dark part of the background behind the chicks head but had trouble getting the right composition. Then I noticed the pleasing blue background which was the out of focus sea. I then changed my angle to put the blue background behind the chicks head and played around with various compositions. The picture at the top of the post shows the result of changing my angle and working the subject.

On our recent January trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island and the Antarctic Peninsula, I was able to give the Nikon D3 a good shakeout, with my trusty D2x as a backup. I was looking forward to seeing how the image quality was at higher ISO’s. This is important when traveling to places such as the Falkland Islands and South Georgia as the weather is typically overcast, resulting in plummeting shutter speeds; not so good for shooting wildlife. The camera did not disappoint; in fact it was stunning. Take a look at the table which shows the ISO speed and the number of photos that were taken (actually the number of images I still have on my disk). Most images were shot at ISO 800, with the next two ranges being ISO 500 and 640. I only have 135 images with the ISO at it’s base value of 200. The image quality was so good that I was treating ISO 800 as a starting point. You will see that I shot a few images at ISO 100 (LO 1); I was trying to get the slowest shutter to blur a glacial stream which had a King penguin standing on a rock.

Compare this to an identical trip that we took in February 2006. In this case, the Nikon D2x was my main camera. The following table shows the ISO speed and associated number of pictures that are sitting on a backup portion of one of my drives. Notice that most of the images where shot at ISO 200. Only a small number of pictures where taken at ISO 800. Was the weather better? Good light? Not really, pretty much the same. What the D3 allowed me to do was to utilize faster shutter speeds and/or add more depth of field. This is a huge benefit to wildlife photographers! Animals are always moving around and the light is not always optimal, so being able to utilize higher ISO is a huge gain!

Considering these statistics, if my D3 was my main camera and my D2x was my backup, how many pictures did you think I took on the trip with my D2x? Less than twenty and I only kept three! I’ll discuss that more in another post.

The Napa Valley “Festival del Sole” includes a live performance of LIFE - A Journey Through Time. This is a multimedia presentation of Frans Lantings LIFE project with images being displayed on three screens accompanied by an orchestra. We’ve seen some demo footage during a workshop that we did with Frans Lanting last year and it was mesmerizing! The performance will be on Sunday July 13. We’ve already got our tickets and highly recommend seeing it. More information can be found here.

We have a booth at the Fillmore Jazz Festival this weekend (July 5-6). A variety of photographs will be on display and available to purchase. We’re at booth # 2406, Fillmore Street, between Washington and Jackson. Stop by to say hello, and a chat (photography, nature, travel, anything).

Yesterday morning, my friend Enrique and myself went down to Palo Alto Baylands with the intention of shooting shorebirds at sunrise. We left San Francisco at 5:10am as sunrise was at 5:48am. Leaving SF, it was already 71F as the Bay area was experiencing a heat wave. On arrival, both of us noticed the moon in the sky as we were getting our gear out of the car. It was too nice to pass by so we started shooting. After a few minutes, the crimson light was gone and the sun started to peak over the East Bay hills so we picked up our gear and headed off to photograph the birds. Compared to previous years, the bird photography at the Baylands this year has not been so good. The Palm trees where the Great and Snowy Egrets nest are not in good condition and the whole place seems more subdued. This is probably due to the low rainfall we’ve experienced this winter.

For the month of January this year, we sailed on the M/V Ushuaia traveling to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the Antarctic Peninsula. It was a eventful and wonderful trip with many great photo opportunities. I’ll discuss the trip, and the photography in more detail over the coming months. There are so many things you can photograph on this type of trip but sometimes magical moments can be easily missed.

In this example, we had just spent six days in various locations on South Georgia. The photographic highlights are the King Penguin colonies and the Wondering Albatross on Prion Island. We had just sailed down Drygalski Fjord and were heading to the south east tip of the island on our way to the Antarctic peninsula. The lenticular cloud formations above the rugged mountains were spectacular, as we sailed past an iceberg. I was on the starboard side of the ship taking photographs of the scenery and suddenly realized I was by myself. I wondered where everybody was. Were they in the bar (yes), were they taking a nap (yes), where was everybody?

Well, a bunch of the passengers were on the port side, looking at the rainbow that had formed. Icebergs on the horizon drifted by. Even the people inside the ship’s bar were looking out of the windows, enjoying the view and a drink!

In the distance, to the right of the rainbow, we could see a larger iceberg slowly drifting towards us. It seemed like a long time before it finally came into view and crossed the path of the rainbow.

Numerous photographs were taken. My favorite was the one shown below, with the rainbow coming from the iceberg. There is also a Black-browed Albatross flying past the rainbow where it touches the iceberg (too small to see on this blog photo). This is my Southern Ocean interpretation of the famous Galen Rowell photograph “Rainbow over the Potala Palace”. So, the well known moral of this story is “if it looks good in front of you, look behind!”

We recently returned from a great two week trip to Belize. A last minute booking, with the decision to go being made after an afternoon discussion with our friend Enrique who had already booked to go along with his wife Margaret. The first week of the trip was spent in the jungle where we photographed Black Howler Monkeys, a rescued Jaguar, and the archaeological sites of Altun Ha and Xunantunich. The second week was split between Long Caye/Halfmoon Caye and Caye Caulker. We spent four nights staying on Long Caye, spending our days on the nearby Halfmoon Caye which is owned by the Belize Audubon society. This is a great place to photograph Red footed Boobies and Frigate birds. The last few days were on Caye Caulker where we planned to see the Manatees in Swallow Caye Wildlife Sanctuary. Unfortunately, the first Atlantic storm of the 2008 season (Tropical Storm Arthur) formed, which halted all the boat trips going out to the wildlife sanctuary. So, the last few days were spent eating, drinking and playing cards. The full force of the storm hit the day before we were due to leave. We had made it back to Belize City and stayed in the Great House hotel (a very nice place). We had torrential rain and constant thunder throughout the night. The next day, the roads were flooded, bridges were out and unfortunately some people were drowned in the south of the country. Belize is a great country to visit, with lots of diverse subjects to shoot; we’ll be returning some time in the future. Some of the photos of the trip can be seen here .