| Surviving
We
survived mostly on codfish that we caught. We had also brought
oats, coffee, pasta, mashed potatoes, liquor and spices to
supplement the fish. At first we had lots of extras with our
meals. The oat porridge was filled with exotic nuts, plums
and spices. But as time passed, we ran out of luxury items
and the meals got simpler. After nearly a week we only ate
fried codfish and boiled oats.
Nikon
D70, Sigma 15mm fisheye. 1/400 sec f/14. The image was de-fisheyed
in panorama tools. After resizing the image I usually sharpen
it up using unsharp mask with extremely small radius (0.2
pixels) and 100 - 500% amount depending on the original. 0
threshold. This yields a sharp image without looking over-sharpened
and over-worked. I usually clear off some sensor dust etc.
as a final step using the clone stamp. I always work with
16 bit raw images and as late as possibly I convert to 8 bit.
However, some images here were shot as JPEG by mistake.
The
Greenland inland ice is so gigantic that it affects the whole
climate of the planet. Above the ice sheet there is constant
high pressure and along the coast warm air with lower density
traps the cold air from the sea creating completely calm days
when the sea becomes as level as a mirror. This and sun every
day made our trip very comfortable, with problems we would
never have expected --sunburns and heat strokes. We had prepared
for a cold and harsh environment, but got quite the opposite.
In this weather, the icebergs were suffering, twisting and
turning. We were very small in this drama. What looked like
a few grains of snow breaking off an iceberg nearby created
loud thunder followed by massive freak waves.
Here
the clouds somewhat match the ice. Nothing I thought of at
the shooting moment though. I got very impressed by the very
calm waters we had and I was intrugued by how the ice conditions
slowly but surely changed as we approached the glacier Equi
(seen to the right). Nikon D70, Sigma 15mm fisheye. 1/2000
sec f/5. Note that since the horizon is crossing through the
exact middle of the picture, the fisheye effect is not that
visible. This image has not been de-fisheyed.
We
were warned about disc-shaped clouds in the sky. It was, according
to legend, a piece of the atmosphere that collapses in this
giant high pressure zone before falling towards the earth's
surface, generating winds up to 250 km/h. This phenomenon
would only last 15 minutes, but we reasoned it would be more
than sufficient to erase us from the water surface. After
hearing about this phenomenon, I thought I saw disc-clouds
everywhere and was constantly worried.
Both
me and Per were very sick and we had to take shelter at the
Arveprinsens Ejland. Our neighbor was a massive iceberg (background)
that had gotten stuck and probably didn't feel too well either.
Nikon D70 and Nikkor AF Micro 105mm. 1/40 sec f/11.
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