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探索, 摄影和自然
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CreativityTranscript
00:14Every
00:14powerful photograph has a powerful story behind it. Photographer Peter Eastway journeys to
00:23the end of the world, Antarctica, with its endless wilderness and wildlife, is Hugh's
00:28photographic paradise. Peter then follows in the footsteps of Frank Hurley, the pioneering
00:38photographer on Shackleton's expedition to the south a century ago. I'm only now beginning
00:44to understand how incredibly tough it was for him to not only survive but to take those
00:50amazing images as well. The pinnacle for Peter will be the untamed wilderness of South Georgia
00:57and to capture her story in a whole new light. While Antarctica is undoubtedly an amazing
01:03location, for me the highlight has always been South Georgia.
01:32Today we romanticise the era of exploration in Antarctica. The story of Ernest
01:38Shackleton and his men is one of the greatest stories of endurance and survival ever told.
01:44In 1914, British explorer Ernest Shackleton departed England and journeyed south attempting to lead
01:52the first crossing of continental Antarctica. Once in the Weddell Sea, worsening weather conditions
01:59and saw their ship the Endurance become trapped in the encroaching pack ice and so began their epic
02:07tale of survival at the end of the world. I think the Shackleton story is all the more famous
02:15because of the films and photographs taken by Australian photographer Frank Hurley. Hurley's approach to
02:23photography was to push the boundaries. He took technology as far as it could go. For him, all that mattered
02:31was the final image of what he could share with the public and I like to think that that's my
02:36approach
02:37to photography as well. What I love about photography is the opportunity to express myself, to take a photograph of
02:48an object
02:49or a location and express it in a way that's my own, in a way that other people perhaps might
02:56not have thought about it.
02:57I think it's the thrill and the excitement of creating an image that not only inspires me but hopefully inspires
03:04other people.
03:09I want to see what I can create that is not just a record but an interpretation of what I
03:15find down in Antarctica.
03:19The idea of a great southern land has stoked the imagination of mankind for centuries.
03:25Antarctica is a magnet for Peter as it was for Hurley 100 years before.
03:55I love the sound of the ice cracking beneath the ship. It means that I'm back in Antarctica.
04:01When you hear there's a feeling in the air, it's hard to describe, it's like a heaviness in the atmosphere
04:07but there's a lightness in spirit.
04:14Out of all the amazing landscapes in the world, Antarctica sits out there on its own.
04:24We've just spent the night in the Weddle Sea. The anchor wasn't down, we were just floating in amongst the
04:29ice.
04:29The wind has dropped, the water is mirror smooth and it was just an exquisite morning as the sun gradually
04:37rose.
04:40Landscape photography is all about the light and great light will punctuate the landscape and give it a three dimensionality.
04:48Hurley understood the defining role light plays in capturing the mood of a landscape and harnessing the best light nature
04:55provides is what I first look for as a photographer.
05:01It's a really special feeling being out here amongst the ice. Our only friends are a couple of penguins.
05:14Working from a Zodiac is a great way to shoot. Water conditions can be a bit rough and it doesn't
05:19matter.
05:19It's nice and stable and it's a perfect platform for sneaking up on wildlife. Cut the engine, drift into position,
05:26they don't even know you're there.
05:48I don't think it really matters what you're photographing. Photography is about composition and communicating.
05:54And I look at these tens of thousands of the daily penguins and there's some wonderful lines as they migrate
06:00from the shores up to the lofty heights above.
06:03It might be nature photography but it doesn't mean that you can't create an art piece at the same time.
06:10This is just one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen.
06:25A daily penguins are one of only five species of penguin living on continental Antarctica.
06:32Their colonies are found in areas of sloping rock that allows drainage for their nests during the melt of the
06:39summer months.
06:40Scientists have recorded that her daily numbers have been increasing in recent years.
06:47With a population now estimated at over two and a half million breeding pairs.
06:59People have all sorts of different ideas about shooting in Antarctica and it's easy in many ways to get great
07:06shots.
07:07The wildlife is just uninhibited, it doesn't worry about humans.
07:11Which means it's a great opportunity with the camera because they're not worried about it, they're not worried about you.
07:16And you just get these amazing opportunities moment after moment after moment.
07:45We've got some wonderful grass ice just broken up bits of ice just along the foreshore here.
07:49And the angle that I've got has got a little bit of an S curve which leads up to this
07:55amazing panorama out there.
07:56I guess it looks like the whole of the ice pack coming down from Antarctica.
08:08Photography is all about being in the right place at the right time.
08:11Sometimes you can engineer it yourself but sometimes it just happens.
08:15And this is one of those moments where all of the elements have just come together in an exquisite display
08:20of colour and light.
08:26Peter's delight in photographing in perfect summer conditions is a deep contrast to the alarming situation that Shackleton's expedition faced
08:36here.
08:38After enduring over 40 weeks locked in a frozen sea, the endurance finally succumbed to the immense pressures imposed on
08:47her and began to break up.
08:51Hurley managed to salvage the best of his glass plate photographs, a precious record of their ordeal so far.
08:58They then braved another five months living shipless on the ice before finally dragging themselves ashore at an exposed outcrop
09:09on Elephant Island.
09:11It had been 497 days since the men had last stood on land but their chance of survival still hung
09:19in the balance.
09:27Hard to believe that we've actually set foot here on Elephant Island.
09:32This is where Shackleton's men spent months on end eating penguins and freezing.
09:38And while it's brutal in its environment, it's also incredibly photogenic.
09:51Thinking back on the grandeur of Hurley's photographs, it's really surprising just how small and exposed this tiny outcrop of
09:59land really is.
10:13In the last half hour, the weather on Elephant Island has just closed in.
10:17It's now a Tolkien landscape of mist and mystery and we're fortunate to be able to leave.
10:23It's great for photographers. It must have been hard for Shackleton's men.
10:30One of the reasons this expedition is so well known is because of the power of Hurley's images.
10:38I think he goes beyond what the technology allows him to do.
10:42And I think he actually pushes that technology to its frontier at that particular point.
10:49This is iconic photographs that Hurley takes of all the men standing on the shore just over there with their
10:55hands like this.
10:56Then there's just one small boat out in the sea and this is the departure.
11:02In actual fact, as was discovered after Hurley's death, this was not an image of any people departing.
11:08They found a glass plate of the original image and he had scratched out the second boat.
11:14And that changed the whole meaning of that image.
11:22I mean look at Hurley's war photographs where he really felt he couldn't get the trenches, the exploding bombs and
11:30the flying planes and the one capture.
11:31The composite images.
11:32And as a photographer I know you can't do that.
11:34The composite images.
11:34And so he got into big trouble with the military official then.
11:37And he's well, I'm trying to communicate a sense of what it is like.
11:41Yes.
11:42Yeah.
11:42And yet the military allowed journalists, allowed writers, allowed painters who could create a reality according to their mind.
11:50And yet a photographer had a different set of rules to abide by.
11:55Photographers have a contract with society in that when people see photographs, many of them have an expectation that it
12:03is real.
12:04So if you're a documentary photographer, I think you need to respect that.
12:08But when you're using photography as art as I am, then the only limitation is your imagination.
12:17As Hurley and his cameras remained on Elephant Island, it is our imagination that is required to picture the gruelling
12:25scenes of Shackleton in an open lifeboat trying to reach a land called South Georgia.
12:32Whereas Shackleton saw South Georgia as his hope for salvation, today Peter sees it as the jewel in the crown
12:41of his photographic journey.
12:48While Antarctica is undoubtedly an amazing location, for me the highlight has always been South Georgia.
12:55It's like the Himalayas reaching down to the ocean with nothing in between.
13:00It's a most exquisite landscape.
13:02If I could only go to one more place, one more time, it would be back to South Georgia.
13:12One of the great things about working in an area like King Harkon Bay is that it's close.
13:17And just by walking up the sides of the hills, you can get a little bit of elevation.
13:21And with elevation comes a different perspective.
13:24And with a different perspective comes an image which has got more power, is more interesting, and that will engage
13:29your viewers more strongly.
13:43With so many photographs out there in the world, how do you stand out?
13:48One of the things I do is to use long exposures.
13:52The old plate photographs taken back in the 19th century, the clouds and the water would be blurred because they
13:59had no option.
13:59It took two minutes, four minutes to make a photograph.
14:02These days I add a neutral density filter so that I can still take that long time.
14:06I create that irreality in the image, and it's that movement in the cloud, the sheen on the water, that
14:12hopefully sets it apart.
14:16Of course, after you've got the image, there's that whole second tier of interpretation.
14:22My approach is very much one of capture and post-production.
14:26We used to do it in the darkroom, but today we process with computers where we can take those photographs
14:32and interpret them.
14:34And this to me is the thrill, the excitement of photography, the fact that you take that image and you
14:40turn it into something that is uniquely yours.
14:43Everyone can take a similar photograph standing here.
14:46No one can recreate what you think the photograph should look like, and that to me is what makes me
14:51so passionate and I guess so addicted to photography.
14:55Shackleton and his crew ultimately survived their 16 day journey to South Georgia.
15:02And after an arduous overland hike finally made it to Stromness Whalen Station.
15:08This marked the beginning of the final rescue of Hurley and the others trapped on Elephant Island.
15:16For photographers today, the ruins are beautiful to photograph, but they hide a politically incorrect past.
15:24A dark history where we basically wiped out the seal population and tens of thousands of whales were slaughtered.
15:33It's a part of the polar experience that a lot of people don't think about.
15:37They think of whites and blues, but there are also reds, there's rust, there's an undercurrent as well.
15:50I really like photographing this aspect and representing it as part of the full polar experience.
16:09Where South Georgia was once known as a place harboring death, it is now slowly recovering back to the former
16:17days of its natural glory.
16:19Fur seals were on the brink of extinction, but are now returning to its shores in great numbers.
16:28I can't remember the last time I was shooting with a wide angle lens to shoot seals.
16:33Normally it's a 400 and you've got to hope that they've come close enough.
16:36But here, they're coming up to us.
17:08You can spend days and days just wandering around the Salisbury Plains.
17:12There's so much happening.
17:13It's a photographer's paradise.
17:24The king is the second largest penguin and it's distinguished by its yellow throat and head feathers.
17:30When you get a lot of them together, and there are over a quarter of a million of them here,
17:35it creates a striking pattern of shapes and colours, an incredible palette of natural beauty.
17:50From a photographer's perspective, this is just perfect.
17:53The plane of penguins rises behind into the hills, creating a backdrop that makes it look like those penguins just
17:59go on,
18:00into infinity.
18:14How incredible is this?
18:16Just so close, so fearless.
18:18They say there's a five metre rule.
18:20You can't go within five metres of the wildlife.
18:23That doesn't mean the wildlife can't come within five metres of you.
18:30As a photographer down here, it's all about the landscape and the wildlife.
18:35It's very hard to extricate one from the other.
18:38It's really a matter of shooting them together, of how they interact with each other, of how they relate to
18:44each other.
18:44It makes the landscape more challenging, but the results far more rewarding.
18:53A perfect example of this is Gold Harbour, and it's become one of my favourite destinations on South Georgia.
19:00And why wouldn't it be?
19:02It's just picture-postcard perfect.
19:04We've got towering cliffs all around with cascading glaciers.
19:09We've got iridescent green hills.
19:11And all around is wildlife.
19:15There is just so much to photograph.
19:18The biggest challenge is working out where to point your camera.
19:28I'm sitting here just on the edge of the colony.
19:31I've got a super wide lens on, and I'm just waiting for the penguins to walk up.
19:35Eventually they get inquisitive enough, and we get a great shot with the penguin in the foreground,
19:41and this incredible landscape in the background.
19:53If there is one word I like to emphasise, it's simplicity.
19:57How do we get this photograph to tell a single story, so that we can communicate with our viewer?
20:04And I think if you nail simplicity, then a lot of the other aspects of composition and light,
20:09well, they just fall into place automatically.
20:25The real challenge when you're presented with an amazing scene like this
20:29is to be able to take something home with you that correctly captures the mood
20:34and the experience of really being there.
20:45Peter's journey to Antarctica and South Georgia, following in the footsteps and inspiration of Frank Hurley,
20:53has been beyond his wildest dreams.
20:56It is now time for him to make the long journey across the Southern Ocean and return home.
21:11I realise my voyage is coming to an end, but in many ways it's just the beginning.
21:16Strange as it may seem, I can't wait to get back home and put these photographs up on my monitor.
21:22That, for me, is when the magic starts.
21:28Photography is not just about capture, it's also about interpreting,
21:33about showing to other people what it is that you felt about what you photographed.
21:38Once you've caressed it into the format that you like, then you turn it into a print.
21:44A print is an image with a life of its own.
21:48And even though processing has changed since Hurley's day, the power of the print remains the same.
21:54It has a presence.
21:57You can walk up and you can look at the texture in the paper.
22:00You can look at the detail in the image.
22:02That's when you really experience a photograph.
22:07I don't care what I have to do or where I have to go.
22:10Everything leads to that final image on the wall.
22:13I don't care what I have to do or where I have to do.
23:12Transcription by CastingWords
23:17CastingWords