Antarctica 2020

Antarctica is just a flat-out emotional place. To see the scale of the mountains, the size of the ice, dozens of whales at a given time, or breathe the freshest air on earth just pulls at your soul. When I sat on the shoreline camping on the mainland, our expedition musician played acoustic guitar. The largest full moon I’ve ever seen slowly rose over the mountains. Icebergs the size of buildings floated by. I had hoped this moment would never pass. To sit motionless watching whales feed under a full moonlit sky in a setting like this was poetry in motion. No song, photograph, or poem could possibly capture the emotional beauty of this combination. I knew when I was composing this image that the ice and moon would make a beautiful connection with the mountains and sea. What I was not prepared for was the following day, looking over the images from the night before, that a Humpback Whale would be breaching to complete this image. This is one of my favorite images in my collection.

Limited edition fine art print of 100

Photo © copyright by Derek Nielsen