Ok -This is not a photography related post by any means (you are just going to have to forgive me this once). But, this news does pertain to my favourite country in the world and therefore I just could not resist sharing this article that appeared in the World Correspondents section of the Australian Age Newspaper on December 24th last year. I can’t say I have seen any Elves in my many visits to Iceland, but having experienced Iceland’s fantastical and primordial landscape you can count me amongst the believers. Any country that has the thirteen trolls of Christmas including one named Stubby who eats the crusts left in pans gets my nod of approval. Bless them all. Just click the image for a larger easier to read version.
Category: Media
Media news including interviews, awards, print publications and articles
Better Photography Magazine – The Jewels of the Arctic Report by Peter Eastway
One of the real pleasures of 2013 for me was having Grand Master of Photography Peter Eastway co-lead the Jewels of the Arctic expedition last August to Greenland and Svalbard. Peter is one of the most accomplished, awarded and respected landscape photographers working today and it was fantastic to be able to work with him during this expedition. On top of being a landscape photographer Peter is also owner and editor of Australia’s Better Photography Magazine. He recently documented our journey through the Arctic for the Summer 2014 issue and has generously allowed me to release the article here as a PDF for download. Be sure to visit Better Photography and subscribe for future articles and issues.
Just in case you missed it – Be sure to watch the short film produced by my good friends at Untitled Film Works of our experiences in the Arctic. Make sure you watch it full screen in glorious 1080p High Definition!
For those of you who have already enquired about the expedition I will be leading in July 2015 to Photograph Polar Bears I will be opening bookings in the next few days. This expedition will be limited to just twelve photographers and there are preliminary details on my website in the WORKSHOPS section.
Testimonial from Chris Gamel – Lessons from Antarctica 2013
Wildlife photographer and biologist Chris Gamel travelled to Antarctica in November this year with me and has just published an article ‘Lessons from Antarctica‘ on his experiences during the expedition in the latest issue of Extraordinary Vision magazine. Extraordinary Vision magazine is one of the new generation of tablet only photography magazines available exclusively for the iPad. EV can be downloaded through iTunes and best of all it is free to subscribe! There isn’t much these days that is both high quality and free so I urge you to check it out, download the back issues and subscribe to future releases. If you are hungry for high quality outdoor photographic content Extraordinary Vision is a fantastic investment – especially given its free. Those of you who are regular readers may remember that I was interviewed for Extraordinary Vision earlier in 2013. That issue also sports one of my photographs from Iceland on the cover and you can download and read a copy of that interview HERE.
Chris was kind enough to allow me to re-produce the introduction to his Antarctica article here on my blog. Make sure you subscribe to EV through iTunes to read the full article.
“Imagine my pleasure several months ago when I opened my first issue of Extraordinary Vision magazine to find an interview with Joshua Holko, an Australian photographer specialising in polar photography. Joshua’s images sparked my imagination and reignited my desire to go to Antarctica. Even better, Joshua’s website informed me that he had a few spaces available on his upcoming November Antarctica expedition. Best of all, I was free in November. After a brief conversation with my wife, I contacted Joshua and made it official. After years of dreaming, I was going to Antarctica! The two-week voyage around the Antarctic Peninsula was incredible. The ship (Polar Pioneer), the expedition staff and Joshua’s leadership met every expectation I had.”
Antarctica – An Epic Sense of Scale
During one of the last zodiac cruises on my recent Antarctica expedition we were fortunate to come across an iceberg of truly monumental size near Antarctic Sound. Whilst I have been fortunate to see and photograph icebergs even larger than this (and the biggest icebergs are measured in kilometres) this particular iceberg also had an incredible chasm, wonderful form and shape and beautifully chiselled features. Our expedition ship ‘Polar Pioneer’ pictured here is seventy two metres long and a full six decks high at the fly bridge. This was actually one giant iceberg joined underneath the water. Our ship could have easily fit through the chasm however such a venture would have been exceedingly dangerous. I admit though my mind was racing with the thought of a blast through this chasm in our zodiac! This photograph was stitched together from eight hand held captures from zodiac. Be sure to click on the image below to see a much larger version in all its grandeur.
December Photograph of the Month : March of the Penguins
I have been notoriously late to update my photo of the month throughout 2013 and I am again more than two weeks late with my final photograph for the year. Unfortunately my hectic travel schedule this year has played havoc with website updates and I have not been quite as timely as I would have liked with updates here on my blog. Nevertheless, I am pleased to close off my photographs of the month for 2013 with this image of Penguins marching across the sea ice in Antarctica. This is my favourite photograph from my recent expedition to Antarctica and really needs to be seen in large print to appreciate the full grandeur, splendour and scale. What I love most about this image is the sense of scale and of the environment in which these hardy creatures survive. I was also blessed with some wonderful polar light at the time we spotted these penguins marching in the distance. This photograph was made with the Canon EOS1DX and Canon 200-400mm F4L IS with inbuilt 1.4 Teleconverter and was shot at 560mm at ISO200 F8 1/500th of a second handheld. A higher resolution version of this photograph can be seen on my primary website at www.jholko.com in the Antarctica Portfolios.
www.WILDNATUREPHOTOTRAVEL.com 