100-Year-Old Box of Negatives Discovered in Antarctica

CENTURY OLD ANTARCTIC IMAGES DISCOVERED IN CAPTAIN SCOTT’S HUT Photographic negatives left a century ago in Captain Scott’s last expedition base at Cape Evans have been discovered and conserved by New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust. The negatives were found in expedition photographer Herbert Ponting’s darkroom and have been painstakingly conserved revealing never before seen Antarctic images.

 The Trust’s conservation specialists discovered the clumped together cellulose nitrate negatives in a small box as part of the Ross Sea Heritage Restoration Project which has seen more than 10,000 objects conserved at Scott’s Cape Evans hut. The negatives were removed from Antarctica by the Trust earlier this year. Detailed conservation treatment back in New Zealand separating the negatives has revealed twenty-two images. The photographs are from Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-1917 Ross Sea Party, which spent time living in Scott’s hut after being stranded on Ross Island when their ship blew out to sea. [via nzaht.org]

*Click on images for larger view*

Alexander Stevens on the deck of the Aurora, McMurdoSound, Antarctica. All images via the Antarctic Heritage Trust.



The cellulose nitrate negatives. found blocked together. The 22 cellulose nitrate negatives were, the Trust believes, left there by Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party, which became stranded on Ross Island when their ship blew out to sea during a blizzard.  


Iceberg and land, Ross Island., Antarctica.

Photo of Alexander Stevens, chief scientist and geologist on-board the Aurora. Shell Benzine cases on the left. Cellulose nitrate processed sheet film negative, found in Captain Scott's 1911 expedition base, Cape Evans, Antarctica, by Antarctic Heritage Trust (NZ) conservators. Photo taken by Ernest Shackleton's Ross Sea Party 1914-1917. 

Video about New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust.


Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.
~ Ernest Shackleton 
Find out more about Shackleton's truly epic adventure:

Stunning Time-Lapse of a Massive Supercell Storm in Texas

Mike Olbinski has been trying to capture a supercell storm for four years.. He finally succeeded .. and WOW did he ever nail it! His extraordinary time-lapse shows the majestic beauty and power of one of Natures most compelling phenomenons.


See more of Mike's work here: mikeolbinski.com or better yet buy a print here!

Technical details: Canon 5D2, Rokinon 14mm 2.8...first three clips were at 1-second intervals = 880ish photos, the last sequence was around 90, 5-second exposures

Watch in HD full screen!
A supercell near Booker, Texas from Mike Olbinski on Vimeo.

Best Time Lapse Ever.... Period. WOW!

PLEASE WATCH IN HD FULL SCREEN w/SOUND FOLKS.

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

SALT ~ Photographer Murray Fredericks

In his search for “somewhere I could point my camera into pure space,” award-winning photographer Murray Fredericks began making annual solo camping trips to remote Lake Eyre and its SALT flats in South Australia. These trips have yielded remarkable photos of a boundless, desolate yet beautiful environment where sky, water and land merge. Made in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Michael Angus, SALT is the film extension of Fredericks’ work at Lake Eyre, interweaving his photos and video diary with time-lapse sequences to create the liberating and disorienting experience of being thrown into an infinite dimension of mind and spirit.

POV - Watch Video | What I Want to Accomplish: Additional Video | PBS 

 What I’m fascinated with is how I feel —when you stand there in the middle of a salt plane and there’s no feature, no definition – you lose a sense of scale, and you lose a sense of boundaries. Some people would feel overwhelmed or unsettled by this, but I experience a sense of freedom. What I’m trying to do is to allow the all those emotions and sensations to affect the creation of the images. A successful image will convey not just a literal space but a psychic space as well. ~ Murray Fredericks

Fredericks on the gear he used: 'One of the interesting things about this project was that it started in 2003 and ended in 2010. In 2003, digital didn’t really exist. It was on the horizon; I think you were paying 20,000 dollars for a 1.5 megapixel sensor? Once I worked out what wanted to shoot out there, I quickly found myself on 8×10 film. I chose the 8”x10” because it allowed compositions to be made out of really subtle subject matter – often just simple tonal gradations. I also knew that if the subject was ‘space’ then the exhibition prints were going to be quite large. I chose to work on negative film for the de-saturated palate.

By the end of the project, however, there was an exhibition at Hamiltons Gallery in London, which was two five meter panoramic prints, and they were shot with ‘stitched’ medium format digital back files. One image was eight frames stitched, and the other was 12 frames stitched. This approach was used to widen the field of view. I was continually pushing the project, trying to find new ways of conveying this sense of space and these advances in digital technology opened up possibilities here that were not available using film cameras. On a single-frame shot, there’s only so wide you can go before the lens starts ‘pulling’ the edges so much that the viewer becomes aware of the ‘stretch’. When the viewer is wondering about the photographer’s technique before the central message of the image then I think the image has failed. ' [via f-stop magazine]

Photographer Profile ~ Ansel Adams

With more than half a century of camera work behind him, Ansel Adams stands as one of America’s greatest and best known landscape photographers. His career is punctuated with countless elegant, handsomely composed, and technically flawless photographs of magnificent natural landscapes. No contemporary photographer equaled the lifetime contributions of Ansel Adams in bringing public recognition of the art of photography or taught so widely the techniques of black and white photography. His strength as an artist is largely attributed to his tireless investigation of the methods of photography, developing a careful darkroom technique of exposure and development he called the Zone System.

Striking photographs of Yosemite and the surrounding Sierra Nevada capturing the elusive visual myth and mood of these wild places became the wellspring of Ansel Adam’s consciousness and brought him widespread popular acclaim. His intimate understanding as well as passion for conservation of this pristine wilderness gave Ansel Adams the energy and tenacity needed to bring subjects to life for a wider public.

Adams founded the Group f/64 along with fellow photographers Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, which in turn created the Museum of Modern Art's department of photography.

His reputation has been firmly established by exhibitions in virtually every major American art museum, three Guggenheim Fellowships and a score of publications. Photography West Gallery features The Ansel Adams Room with a permanent rotating exhibition of ever-changing images by this legendary master.

 Ansel Adams (After He Got a Contax Camera), by Edward Weston 1936