Back from Patagonia

We're back home again. We had a good time in Patagonia, but we had clearly used all our luck for good weather in Antarctica. In Chili we got one decent day where we could actually see the mountains, and the same thing in Argentina. As a result I didn't take many shots with spectacular mountain backdrops, unfortunately. The scenery was stunning though and we really enjoyed driving and walking around. Our 16km hike in total darkness to get to the perfect location for sunrise on Mt. Fitzroy was a complete failure - low clouds and no mountain to be seen - but it was good fun and good exercise. We'll probably go back there next year and hope for better conditions.

Back from Antarctica

We're back in Ushuaia. Antarctica was awesome. The weather was extremely good - as a matter of fact a bit too good. Lots of sunshine and blue skies, not something I would pick for this place. But I guess it's better than being stuck on the ship because of storms. We got none of that. Temperatures were mild, not a lot of wind, and we didn't miss a single landing. We saw penguins, whales, penguins, leopard seals, penguins, dolphins, and lots of penguins. One of the highlights was cruising between giant icebergs in a small zodiac - can't wait to start processing the images. But I'll have to, because the next two weeks we will spend in Argentina and Chili.

View from the ship on yet another calm and sunny day.

Double Success In Travel Photographer Of The Year!

I just got an email from the Travel Photographer Of The Year Awards with some great news: I won two First Prizes in this year's competition!

In the landscape category (Wild Planet) I won First Prize for a series of four images from Namibia. All images were shot at night and feature quivertrees and stars, lots of stars.

This is what the judges said about the images:
'The sky is often overlooked when thinking about the wildness of this planet but what better example is there than the sky at night and the heavens filled with stars? Marsel's images were shot using small flashlights and natural starlight to illuminate quiver trees in the Namibian desert.'

One of the four winning shots from Namibia.

The second First Prize is for our timelapse video 'Namibian Nights'. We started working on this timelapse project in 2011 and we put a lot of time and effort in to get the results we were after. This summer I selected and processed all the images for all the different scenes, and after that Daniella did all the editing. We are really happy with the results and we're even happier winning First Prize in this prestigious competition!

The winning images and videos from 2012 will be exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society in London next year. After that, the images will form part of a new TPOTY international touring exhibition.

We will put the video online as soon as we're back home.

Update 15/11: The winning 'Namibian Nights' timelapse video is now online. Check it out here.