Tales by Light (2015) s01e05 Episode Script

1
Every powerful photograph
has a powerful story behind it.
Photographer Peter Eastway
journeys to the
end of the world
Antarctica with its endless
wilderness and wildlife
is his photographic paradise.
This is just one of the most
amazing sights I've ever seen!
Peter then follows
in the footsteps
of Frank Hurley -
the pioneering photographer
on Shackleton's expedition
to the south a century ago.
I'm only now
beginning to understand
how incredibly
tough it was for him
to not only survive
but to take those
amazing images as well.
The pinnacle for Peter
will be the untamed
wilderness of South Georgia
and to capture her story
in a whole new light.
While Antarctica
is undoubtedly an
amazing location,
for me, the highlight has
always been South Georgia.
Today we romanticise
the era of exploration
in Antarctica.
The story of Ernest Shackleton
and his men
is one of the greatest
stories of endurance
and survival ever told.
In 1914
British explorer
Ernest Shackleton
departed England
and journeyed south
attempting to lead
the first crossing
of continental Antarctica.
Once in the Weddell Sea,
worsening weather
conditions saw their ship,
the Endurance,
become trapped in
the encroaching pack ice.
And so began their
epic tale of survival
at the end of the world.
I think the Shackleton story
is all the more famous
because of the films
and photographs
taken by Australian
photographer Frank Hurley.
Hurley's approach to photography
was to push the boundaries,
he took technology
as far as it could go.
For him, all that mattered
was the final image,
of what he could
share with the public.
And I like to think
that that's my approach
to photography as well.
What I love about photography
is the opportunity
to express myself.
To take a photograph of
an object or a location
and express it in
a way that's my own,
in a way that other
people perhaps
might not have thought about it.
I think it's the thrill
and the excitement
of creating an image
that not only inspires me
but hopefully
inspires other people.
I want to see what I can create
that is not just a record
but an interpretation
of what I find
down in Antarctica.
The idea of
a great Southern Land
has stoked the imagination
of mankind for centuries.
Antarctica is a magnet for Peter
as it was for Hurley
100 years before.
I love the sound
of the ice cracking
beneath the ship,
it means that I'm
back in Antarctica.
When you're here there's
a feeling in the air,
it's hard to describe,
it's like a heaviness
in the atmosphere,
but there's
a lightness in spirit.
Out of the amazing
landscapes in the world,
Antarctica sits out there
on its own.
We've just spent
the night in the Weddell Sea
the anchor wasn't down,
we were just floating
amongst the ice.
The wind has dropped,
the water is mirror smooth
and it was just an
exquisite morning
as the sun gradually rose.
Landscape photography
is all about the light,
and great light will
punctuate the landscape
and give it a
three-dimensionality.
Hurley understood
the defining role light plays
in capturing the mood
of a landscape.
And harnessing the best
light nature provides
is what I first look
for as photographer.
It's a really special feeling
being out here amongst the ice,
our only friends are
a couple of penguins.
Working from a Zodiac
is a great way to shoot.
Water conditions
can be a bit rough
and it doesn't matter,
it's nice and stable,
and it's a perfect platform
for sneaking up on wildlife -
cut the engine,
drift into position,
they don't even
know you're there.
I don't think it really matters
what you're photographing,
photographing is about
composition and communicating.
And I look at these
tens of thousands
of Adelie penguins
and there's some wonderful
lines as they migrate
from the shores up to
the lofty heights above.
It might be nature photography,
but it doesn't mean
that you can't create
an art piece at the same time.
This is just one of the most
amazing sights I've ever seen.
Adelie penguins
are one of only five
species of penguin
living on continental
Antarctica.
Their colonies are found
in areas of sloping rock
that allows drainage
for their nests
during the melt of
the summer months.
Scientists have recorded
that Adelie numbers
have been increasing
in recent years
with a population now estimated
at over two and a half
million breeding pairs.
People have all sorts
of different ideas
about shooting in Antarctica,
and it's easy in many
ways to get great shots.
The wildlife is
just uninhibited,
it doesn't worry about humans,
which means it's a great
opportunity with a camera
because they're not
worried about it,
they're not worried about you
and you just get these
amazing opportunities -
moment after moment
after moment.
We've got some
wonderful brash ice,
just broken up bits of ice
just along the foreshore here.
And the angle that I've got,
has got a little
bit of a S curve
which leads up to this
amazing panorama out there.
I guess it looks like
the whole of the ice pat
coming down from Antarctica.
Photography is all about
being in the right place
at the right time -
sometimes you can
engineer it yourself,
but sometimes it just happens.
And this is one of those moments
where all of the elements
have just come together
in an exquisite display
of colour and light.
Peter's delight in photographing
in perfect summer conditions
is a deep contrast
to the alarming situation
that the Shackleton's
expedition faced here.
After enduring over 40 weeks
locked in a frozen sea
the Endurance finally succumbed
to the immense pressures
imposed on her
and began to break up.
Hurley managed to salvage
the best of his glass
plate photographs
a precious record of
their ordeal so far.
They then braved
another five months
living shipless on the ice
before finally dragging
themselves ashore
at an exposed outcrop
on Elephant Island.
It had been 497 days
since the men had
last stood on land,
but their chance of survival
still hung in the balance.
It's hard to believe that
we've actually set foot here
on Elephant Island.
This is where Shackleton's
men spent months on end
eating penguins and freezing.
And while it's brutal
in its environment,
it's also incredibly photogenic.
Thinking back on the grandeur
of Hurley's photographs,
it's really surprising
just how small
and exposed this tiny
outcrop of land really is.
The last half hour
the weather on Elephant Island
has just closed in.
It's now a Tolkien landscape
of mist and mystery
and we're fortunate
to be able to leave.
It's great for photographers,
it must have been hard
for Shackleton's men.
One of the reasons
this expedition is so well known
is because of the power
of Hurley's images.
I think he goes beyond
what the technology
allows him to do,
and I think he actually
pushes that technology
to its frontier
at that particular point.
There's this iconic
photograph that Hurley takes
of all the men standing on
the shore just over there
with their hands like this,
then there's just one
small boat out in the sea
and this is the departure.
In actual fact,
as was discovered
after Hurley's death,
this was not an image
of any people departing.
They found a glass plate
of the original image,
and he had scratched out
the second boat
and that changed the whole
meaning of that image.
I mean, look at
Hurley's war photographs,
where he really felt
he couldn't get the trenches,
the exploding bombs
and the flying planes
in the one capture.
And as a photographer
I know you can't do that.
They're composite images.
And so he got into big trouble
with the military officials.
"Well I'm trying to communicate
a sense of what it is like."
Yes.
And yet the military
allowed journalists,
allowed writers,
allowed painters
who could create a reality
according to their mind.
And yet a photographer
had a different set
of rules to abide by.
Photographers have
a contract with society
in that when people
see photographs,
many of them have an
expectation that it is real.
So if you're a
documentary photographer,
I think you need
to respect that.
But when you're using
photography as art, as I am,
then the only limitation
is your imagination.
As Hurley and his cameras
remained on Elephant Island,
it is our imagination
that is required
to picture the gruelling
scenes of Shackleton
in an open lifeboat
trying to reach a land
called South Georgia.
Whereas Shackleton
saw South Georgia
as his hope for salvation;
today Peter sees it as
the jewel in the crown
of his photographic journey.
While Antarctica
is undoubtedly an
amazing location,
for me, the highlight has
always been South Georgia.
It's like the Himalayas
reaching down to the ocean
with nothing in between.
It's a most exquisite landscape.
If I could only go to one
more place, one more time,
it would be back
to South Georgia.
One of the great things
about working in an
area like Haarkon Bay,
is that it's close
and just by walking up
the sides of the hills
you can get a little
bit of elevation.
And with elevation, comes
a different perspective.
And with a different perspective
comes an image which
has got more power,
is more interesting,
and that will engage your
viewers more strongly.
With so many photographs
out there in the world,
how do you stand out?
One of the things I do
is to use long exposures.
The old plate photographs
taken back in the 19th century,
the clouds and the water
would be blurred
because they had no option.
It took two minutes, four
minutes, to make a photograph.
These days, I add a
neutral density filter
so that I can still
take that long time,
I create that
irreality in the image.
And it's that
movement in the cloud,
that sheen in the water
that hopefully sets it apart.
Of course, after
you've got the image,
there's that whole second
tier of interpretation.
My approach is very much
one of capture
and post-production.
We used to do it
in the dark room,
but today we process
with computers
where we can take
those photographs
and interpret them.
And this to me is the thrill,
the excitement
of photography -
the fact that you
take that image
and you turn it into something
that is uniquely yours.
Everyone can take a similar
photograph standing here,
no one can recreate
what you think the photograph
should look like.
And that to me is what
makes me so passionate
and I guess so addicted
to photography.
Shackleton and his crew
ultimately survived their
16 day journey to South Georgia
and after an arduous
overland hike
finally made it to
Stromness whaling station.
This marked the beginning
of the final rescue
of Hurley and the others
trapped on Elephant Island.
For Photographers today
the ruins are beautiful
to photograph.
But they hide a politically
incorrect past -
a dark history
where we basically wiped
out the seal population
and thousands of whales
were slaughtered.
It's a part
of the polar experience
that a lot of people
don't think about.
They think of whites and blues
but there's also reds,
there's rusts,
there's an undercurrent as well.
I really like
photographing this aspect,
and representing it as part
of the full polar experience.
Where South Georgia
was once known
as a place harbouring death,
it is now slowly recovering
back to the former days
of its natural glory.
Fur seals were on
the brink of extinction
but are now returning
to its shores in great numbers.
I can't remember the last time
I was shooting with a wide
angle lens to shoot seals,
normally it's a 400
and you've got to hope that
they'll come close enough.
But here, they're
coming up to us.
You can spend days and days
just wandering around
the Salisbury Plains,
there's so much happening;
it's a photographer's paradise.
The King is
the second largest penguin
and it's distinguished
by its yellow throat
and head feathers.
When you get a lot
of them together,
and there's over a quarter
of a million of them here,
it creates a striking pattern
of shapes and colours,
an incredible palette
of natural beauty.
From a photographer's
perspective,
this is just perfect.
The plain of penguins rises
behind into the hills,
creating a backdrop
that makes it look like
those penguins just
go on into infinity.
How incredible is this?
Just so close, so fearless.
They say there's
a five metre rule;
you can't go within five
metres of the wildlife.
That doesn't mean the wildlife
can't come within
five metres of you.
As a photographer down here,
it's all about the landscape
and the wildlife.
It's very hard to extricate
one from the other.
It's really a matter
of shooting them together,
of how they interact
with each other,
of how they relate
to each other.
It makes the landscape
more challenging,
but the results
far more rewarding.
A perfect example of
this is gold harbour
and it's become one of
my favourite destinations
on South Georgia.
And why wouldn't it be, it's
just picture postcard perfect.
We've got towering
cliffs all around
with cascading glaciers.
We've got iridescent green hills
and all around there's wildlife.
There is just so
much to photograph
that the biggest challenge
is working out
where to point your camera.
I'm sitting here just
on the edge of the colony.
I've got a super wide lens on
and I'm just waiting for
the penguins to walk up.
Eventually they get
inquisitive enough
and we get a great shot with
the penguin in the foreground
and this incredible
landscape in the background.
If there is one word
I like to emphasise,
it's simplicity.
How do we get this photograph
to tell a single story,
so that we can communicate
with our viewer.
And I think if you
nail simplicity,
then a lot of the other aspects
of composition and light,
well, they just fall into
place automatically.
The real challenge
when you're presented with
an amazing scene like this,
is to be able to take
something home with you
that correctly captures the mood
and the experience of
really being there.
Peter's journey
to Antarctica and South Georgia,
following in footsteps and
inspiration of Frank Hurley
has been beyond
his wildest dreams.
It's now time for him
to make the long journey
across the Southern Ocean
and return home.
I realise my voyage
is coming to an end,
but in many ways
it's just the beginning.
Strange as it may seem,
I can't wait to get back home
and put these photographs
up on my monitor.
That for me is when
the magic starts.
Photography is not
just about capture,
it's also about interpreting,
about showing to other
people what it is
that you felt about
what you photographed.
Once you've caressed it
into the format that you like,
then you turn it into a print.
A print is an image
with a life of its own.
And even though
processing has changed
since Hurley's day
the power of the print
remains the same.
It has a presence.
You can walk up
and you can look at
the texture and the paper,
you can look at the
detail in the image,
that's when you really
experience a photograph.
I don't care what I have to do,
or where I have to go,
everything leads to that
final image on the wall.