Lomography

Eight Memories from The Arctic
written by rater on July 5th, 2009 , 10 comments (6 votes)

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Most of you have seen the photos of Stouf in the Arctic, as well as red his great posts on it: When Holga went to the Arctic (http://www.lomography.com/magazine/blog/2009/01/11/when-holga-went-in-the-arctic) and Lomos in the Arctic (http://www.lomography.com/magazine/locations/2009/05/07/lomos-in-the-arctic-wide-arctic-horizons). If you did not, go ahead and click on the link, you will not be disappointed! Every time I read his first posts on the Arctic I can not avoid smile and feel a bit of nostalgia as I was also lucky enough to participate on this expedition on board the Canadian icebreaker Amundsen! The trip took us to the south of Banks Island, in the Amundsen gulf. What I can tell that Stouf has not explained already…

I am a PhD student on oceanography in Quebec, my field is microbes diversity (yes, there are microbes in the Arctic! And no, I am not a nerd!) and when I am on board the ship I spend my time filtering litters and litters of water. Well, that and taking photos. And how can you not, with the breathtaking landscapes that you can find there! I always forget that I took a couple of rolls with the Holga while I was there in winter. Actually there were 3 rolls: 2 Velvia 100 and 1 Ilford 3200. From the latter, well, I did not succeed getting any photo out of it, the whole roll came back from the lab completely transparent, with occasionally a black spot, clearly not enough exposed… Damn, how can you not enough expose a 3200 iso!!! Winter in the Arctic besides cold is dark, even for a 3200 iso…

The history of the Velvias is different as I could save some images out of them: a self portrait done with flash (flash died after this one, so cold!) a portrait of Stouf (he almost got blind while I was doing that photo), a couple of Holgaramas (one team-working on the ice collecting zooplankton samples; the other the ship –our home- from the ice), some blurry shots from the ice (mounting a tent on the ice, which proudly survived a strong tempest) and one photo from the top of the ship as it is breaking ice (just breathtaking). That’s it, that’s all, 8 photos, a rather short number of images done with my Holga in the Arctic. But I cherish every one of this photos as all of them explain me a little story about how incredible and fun was this trip. Maybe it is because of the blurry of all of them, the same as the shape of the memories, sharp on some spots but definitely blurry on the edges… but giving always a warmth in the heart.