One of any glacier’s most unique and remarkable structures are it’s seracs and Fox Glacier was and is no exception. Its crevasse  and serac field is littered with unique and unusual ice formations. This natural ice spire caught my eye as we skimmed over the glacier in the small mountain helicopter. I focused my attention on it trying to capture it from just the right angle to show its precarious stance and unusual flutings. These ice formations are often very unstable and dangerous. Pound for pound glacial ice weighs about the same as concrete so these formations are really only accessible safely for photography by helicopter. I photographed this with a 24mm wide angle lens to capture enough surrounding ice to keep the spire in context. The sense of scale gets somewhat lost in a small jpeg – but you could have driven a semi-trailer through the ice cave with ease.

The glacial plateau at the base of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman is spectacular for its unique ice formations.  This photograph particularly appeals to me with the soft blue light in the foreground and the juxtaposition of the soft snow and jagged ice formations. This photograph also gives a very good indication of the immense scale of the mountains and ice structures. Another helicopter can just be seen just left of centre at the top of frame – look close its just a dot!This photograph was taken hand held from the small mountain  helicopter we chartered during our time at the Fox Glacier. Shot with a wide angle lens the pilot was able to get us in very close to the ice structures to fully take advantage of the lens’s wide angle of view.

With an elevation of more than eleven thousand four hundred and seventy feet Mount Tasman is the second highest peak in New Zealand. It sits proud in the southern alps, nestled next to its larger and more famous brother – Mount Cook. This photograph was taken by helicopter over the Fox Glacier in New Zealand’s South Island about half an hour before sunset. Together with my local New Zealand guide and fellow landscape photographer from Texas we chartered a small mountain helicopter to get us up close and personal with Fox Glacier and the Southern Alps. We had the pilot remove the doors from the helicopter and strap us into harness’s so we could freely photograph without plexi-glass in front of the camera lens. Strapped into the helicopter we were then able to photograph the amazing mountains and ice formations that are part of New Zealand’s spectacular Southern Alps. This photograph was taken at an altitude of approximately eleven thousand feet with an ambient air temperature of -14 degrees celsius. Despite wearing multiple thermal layers, hats and gloves we were still numbed to the bone after just over an hours photography in the frigid mountain air.

Aerial photography as it turns out can be very addictive and we found ourselves chartering the same helicopter and pilot the very next morning for another ‘doors off’ photography session over some of the Fox Glacier’s Seracs and Crevaces. I hope to post more photographs from this remarkable trip as time permits.