Ultimate Antarctica January 5–February 1, 2008

What in the world do I bring? What should I have, what must I have, and what don’t I need? How will I carry this stuff and where will I keep it? These are just some of the questions we asked ourselves as we packed for our trip to Antarctica. Getting it right was critical, too, because there’s no recourse—there are no FedEx deliveries in the South Atlantic Ocean!

As a veteran of a couple of Antarctica Photo Tours, I think I can offer up some sound packing advice if you are planning on visiting the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia Island. These suggestions are based on our personal experiences, as well as what’s worked well for others.

The first question I’m always asked about this trip is, "How cold does it get?" The answer surprises people, because the common misconception is an Antarctica of snow and ice, blasting winds, and intolerable conditions. If you’ve seen the film, March of the Penguins, you’ll know what I mean.

While that’s true during the Antarctic winter, most trips visit during the Antarctic summer, as seasons are reversed between the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres. In summer the daily high temperatures can vary from the mid-40s to the high-20s along the Antarctica Peninsula, and South Georgia is even more clement. True, the austral summer can be chilly, but I can tell you, I’ve been a lot colder on winter trips to Yellowstone!

That said, it can get cold and windy, especially around enormous glaciers where the sheer volume of ice chills the surrounding air. Cold air sinks and heat rises, but this bit of physics is carried to its extreme in glacial areas, where catabatic winds occur. These gale-force blasts are generated as cold air rolls down a glacial slope, gaining momentum until it cascades like an atmospheric avalanche. Like a powerful fan exhausting a deep freezer, catabatic winds can be quite chilling. The best solution is to dress in layers, allowing you to add or remove garments as needed. Air is a wonderful insulator, so even relatively lightweight garments can keep you warm if you’re using several layers.

We always dress in layers—long underwear, either a light pair of pants or rain pants, and chest waders (we’ll follow up on this shortly) for the bottom, and a moisture-wicking tee-shirt, turtleneck, shirt, sweater and Gore-Tex or similar outer jacket for the top. If we’re active and generating heat or it’s a warm day, we’ll shed one or more of these outer layers. On our last trip,

	Typical weather and typical dress on the Antarctic Peninsula. Unless it is windy, the weather is surprisingly clement.

we were down to shirts on a few unusually sunny, still days. A hat and gloves are important, too, as a lot of heat radiates from the top of the head, and cold cameras and tripods can quickly draw the warmth out of your digits. We usually carry two pairs of gloves—light wool gloves for use on land, and waterproof, insulated gloves for wet weather and Zodiac rides.

If you’re dressed properly you don’t have to worry about keep warm in a catabatic wind, but you do have to worry about your equipment—because it is almost inevitable, if you leave expensive camera equipment unattended on a tripod, it will blow over! It’s a classic example of Murphy’s Law—a wind will blow the only time you walk away from your gear! On our last trip, both Mary and I had our gear blown over in just such a moment of inattention. We were not the only ones caught by surprise. One very calm day on South Georgia, another photographer, who was shooting a bay scene with two of his tripod legs extended into the water, left his camera

	Although it rained the entire afternoon, we had a successful shoot, as we were dressed properly and had protected our equipment.

for a moment to scout out a different shot, and had his gear tipped over by an unexpected blast. Fortunately his equipment fell onto the beach and not into the water, as this near-disaster occurred early on in the trip. Please take heed!

In the South Atlantic the weather can change a half dozen times in as many hours. While layering will address the cold temperatures, it’s important to have good foul-weather gear in case of rains. As our standard garb we wore Gore-Tex-type rain pants and jackets (ours are Dry-Plus from Cabela’s), and on the few occassions we had poor weather we stayed dry.

	It’s important to keep your gear dry, both in the Zodiac and when going ashore. We keep our camera backpacks inside drybags.

Most landings are "wet," meaning that you’ll be stepping out into the surf rather than onto a dry beach. Sometimes the seas are so calm that a wet landing is nothing more than timing a step onto the wet sand, but at other times wave action might be a concern. On our last trip, although some folks simply wore calf-high, Wellington-style rubber boots, most photographers used either hip- or chest-waders. Mary wore a pair of hip waders while I used chest waders, since I was sometimes in deeper water helping with the Zodiacs. Both Cabela’s (www.cabelas.com) and BassPro (www.basspro.com) offer a large selection of waders; ours are very lightweight and made from a fabric called Dry-Plus. Some photographers used insulated neoprene waders, but we found them heavy, cumbersome and rather confining; we were far more mobile and flexible using our lighter-weight versions.

It is important to protect your gear as well, especially when getting into or out of the Zodiacs. Lowepro (www.lowepro.com) makes completely waterproof photo backpacks called the DryZone 100 and DryZone 200. The bags are perfect if you’re not carrying a lot of gear, but they are a bit too small for the 500mm lenses we often pack along.

Instead, we protect our camera equipment in drybags, waterproof packs inside of which we put our normal backpacks. We use Boundary Waters II Backpacks from Cabela’s, which have backpack-style shoulder straps and a waist belt. The outfit is heavy when we put our packs inside, but we rarely have to carry the waterproof pack further than the beach, where we remove our lighter and more comfortable camera backpacks. We use the large models, which easily accommodate our camera packs and any additional clothes we might have along. The regular size would be fine for someone with a smaller camera bag. The bags range in price from $60 to about $80, and are great insurance if you’re concerned, as you should be, about dunking your equipment.

A photography session on shore can last all day, depending upon the site, so it’s important that you have all the equipment you’ll need and still not be weighed down with tons of gear. For us that means carrying zoom lenses. Our standard lens is a 28-300mm f3.5/5.6 zoom, which satisfies almost all of our shooting needs. Mary, in fact, uses that lens for about 95% of her shooting, and most days does not carry the 500mm she had brought along. I did carry both lenses, but at least 70% of my shooting involved this versatile zoom lens.

As our lens choices indicate, it is useful to have a variety of focal lengths available, or a zoom lens that covers as great a focal range as possible. While our zooms are Canon, other manufacturers also offer zooms of varying ranges that are comparable. Sigma, for example, makes a 50-500mm f4/6.3 lens, Nikon a 18-135mm f3.5/5.6, Tokina has a 24-200mm f3.5/5.6,

	You’ll need a couple of lenses covering a range of focal lengths, or one or two versatile zoom lenses, to cover all your needs from wide-angle to telephoto.

and Tamron has its own version of the 28-300mm at f3.5/6.3. On our last trip, a few photographers carried tilt/shift lenses, which provide greater depth-of-field at any given shutter speed. These lenses are somewhat bulky and of limited use, and but we’re thinking of taking one or two along in the future.

As a basic kit, you should have a wide-angle for the broad landscapes, a medium telephoto—especially one of the zooms—for general shooting, and perhaps a longer telephoto for wildlife portraits. Depending upon your lens choice and needs, this might be covered with one or two versatile zoom lenses. If you want greater versatility, also consider an extreme wide-angle or a fish-eye and a super telephoto like a 500mm. Flash is handy for giving eye-highlights on dark-faced penguins and for fill flash, but if space was limited we could live without a flash. If you’re a digital shooter, the only filter you’ll really need is a polarizer. If you have lenses of different filter diameters, buy a polarizer to fit the largest lens and use step-up rings to fit the polarizer to the smaller lenses.

Perhaps most importantly, we strongly urge you to bring along two cameras, although we usually only carry one on-shore. Murphy’s Law should, once again, be your guide, as you don’t want to risk having your only camera go down on the trip of a lifetime.

Whether or not you use a tripod depends in a large part on your degree of seriousness. While most pros and serious shooters use a tripod religiously, not all do, and for amateurs not worried about the marketplace, a tripod may not be necessary. On our last trip, I

	Although you won’t be using a tripod on a Zodiac you’re likely to find one very useful for shooting while on shore.

almost lost my tripod when a friend carried mine up slippery gangway steps while holding the tripod out over the railing. Had he lost his grip…well, I don’t even want to think about it. Next trip, we’ll be packing our tripods in tripod bags that have a sling strap for easy carrying.

When flying to our point of embarkation, we carry our equipment in two rolling carry-on cases, which will hold our camera bodies and most important lenses. We pack our tripods, backpacks, dry bags, flashes and smaller (or less important) lenses in our checked luggage. Once on the boat, we transfer everything to our camera backpacks and store the carry-on luggage. If your camera backpack complies with airline carry-on regulations, and if you don’t mind wearing a pack through airports, you could, of course, skip the rolling bags.

Since we’re digital shooters we also have to concern ourselves with all the hardware that’s involved, but we’ll cover that in a later installment. For now, however, as you plan for the ultimate photo adventure to Antarctica, we’ve given you enough to think about!

All images Copyright © Joe and Mary Ann McDonald