SVALBARD, FROM THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
"The boat is solid, a Swedish icebreaker that has certainly faced much rougher seas, but my perception is that it might overturn at any moment. I admit that I'm certainly not a sailor - after all I was born in the mountains - and I feel much more comfortable with my feet firmly anchored to the land. Far stronger, however, was the motivation to explore these wild lands of the great north and see their extraordinary beauty with my own eyes. And here I am, lying on the bed for 18 hours with time marked by continuous oscillations that, like a pendulum, see myself alternately upside down and almost in an upright position, with respect to a horizontal line that no longer exists.
When the waves finally begin to calm down, I understand that we are about to reach the pack ice and decide to get out on the exterior deck. In front of me, an infinite sea of white and light blue icebergs opens up, until the gray fog of the horizon. In contact with Nature and her energy, nausea and exhaustion mysteriously vanish and I find myself leaning against the bulwark of the bow with my wide angle that frames landscapes never seen before.
When you photograph from a moving boat that sways on the water, it obviously means to give up on the use of a tripod, remote control and the thoughtful choice of the composition that you had on land, where the elements of the scene in front of you do not change. Instead, in these conditions it is necessary to photograph freehand by chasing the subject and following more than ever the inspiration of your instinct, especially with a wide angle lens where the search for an interesting foreground is often crucial.
Therefore, paying the utmost attention to maintaining the precarious balance, I set the camera as if I were chasing a lion running in the bush at dusk. This time, instead, I am the moving subject in the still landscape that I am trying to photograph and that continuously changes in the eyepiece of my camera."
I took these words from my book "You are Nature" and the images I share with you are my "travel notes" from two expeditions to the Svalbard archipelago, up in the Arctic Ocean.
A still wild although rapidly changing land. The kingdom of the polar bear and home to a rich fauna adapted to live in extreme conditions, among glaciers and mountains overlooking the sea.