Icelandair, the original “hippie express” used to offer flights between the US and Europe for about half what the other air carriers charged. Their strategy was pretty cool – they used less expensive jets with shorter range, and did a brief stopover to refuel at Keflavik Airport in Iceland.
Depending on the time of day, you usually get a great view of the southern tip of Greenland.
mjr, ’17
Greenland is pretty inhospitable-looking. From 5 miles up, my sense of scale gets messed with a bit – obviously, those are big mountains. How big are those chunks of ice floating in the inlets? Probably about the size of the one the Titanic hit.
You can see the pattern of the wind and snow, which also makes the sense of scale get confused:
mjr, ’17
From 5 miles up, a “glacier” looks a lot like that spot on my driveway where the bank and the open field cause the snow to pile up, making it pack down and get impassible. I know it’s not the same thing, because the physics don’t scale up and down perfectly symmetrically, but it looks like it. And, basically, yes, that’s a big slush-mass heading for the road.
mjr, ’17
My iPhone camera had some trouble with that one, because of the lack of things to focus on, but that’s a region in the central highlands of Greenland. Once you get past the edges, it’s just a solid wad of snow with occasional things sticking up above the surface. I assume that what we’re looking at here is a mountain-top. Look at the way the snow blows across and makes the same kind of forms that snow makes on a smaller-scale! If I put a snowball down in my driveway in the winter, it will soon look like that pattern in the upper right (except the prevailing winds go the opposite direction) – however, I imagine that, if I were standing down there, it’s a huge snow-cliff that I have absolutely no desire to be anywhere near.
I see similar patterns when I fly across Arizona and Utah, where the water has run off across the mountains and sandy valleys and it looks a lot like the silt in the ditch alongside my driveway. It makes me wonder if I could grab my camera and get some close shots of snow or silt, and maybe photoshop in a few signs of human life, and suddenly our brains would recognize it as being at a whole different scale.
Back in 1999 I did a trip to Korea, and the plane went up over the Bering Sea for what seemed like hours and hours. I experienced a cool illusion: there was nothing that indicated scale at all, so my brain couldn’t tell how far the gigantic sheet of cracked snow was from the tip of the plane’s wing. Sometimes I’d look out at it and my brain would go “whoah, we’re skimming the surface.” I made it a game to try to spot any sign of human activity and saw nothing for hours. I know there are people who wander around down there, but – nope, nope, nopeitty nope.
My memories of Greenland, from my childhood, are that it was all white – there was no visible rock at all – not even on the leeward side. Maybe this is climate change, maybe it’s my bad memory. I didn’t see icebergs floating down toward Labrador, which I used to see a lot of.
mjr, ’17
On the windward side of the island, there are more glaciers but I guess the icebergs are just blown back up against the face of the glacier.
I’m a bit embarrassed by the low quality of these photos, but I refuse to haul my good camera around – mostly because putting it through security is a big pain, and carrying a camera bag screams “steal me!” so I got in the habit of hand-carrying my camera everywhere. That’s good exercise for hand-strength. Hey, someone needs to make a “tactical camera” that can double as a bludgeon and that has a built-in spork.
Marc Deneyer, a French photographer, spent some time on the windward coast of Greenland at a place called Ilullisat, photographing snow using full contrast-range techniques. His photos are amazing [deneyer] since they’re purely composition and tonal range.
Sorry about the fwd/back indicators, this is a screenshot. [source]
Ooooooooh. Glad you’ve made contact, I was gettin’ a bit worried!
carrying a camera bag screams “steal me!”
That’s why I don’t carry my camera in a “camera bag”, instead I use what looks just like any other normal bag. Besides, whenever something gets marketed as a “camera bag”, it immediately becomes ridiculously expensive. Same is true also for any other photography accessories.
Hey, someone needs to make a “tactical camera” that can double as a bludgeon and that has a built-in spork.
That’s impossible. Camera insides are very fragile. Even if the camera housing was made from heavy and rugged materials, it still couldn’t take any impact. For example, if you drop a lens, even if you don’t end up with a broken front element, glass elements inside your lens can misalign from the impact. It always annoys me that lens reviewers talk about “build quality” of lenses and assume that heavier lenses with metal housings are somehow more resistant. But that’s not how it works. If you place a raw egg inside a rugged metal box and start swinging it around, the egg inside the box will still crack. The only way how to protect a camera is to be careful with it (don’t drop it) and to carry it inside a padded bag. Therefore personally I like my cameras and lenses made from plastic, because that’s lighter to lug around, and I don’t want any imaginary “built quality”.
Ieva Skrebele@#2:
That’s impossible. Camera insides are very fragile. Even if the camera housing was made from heavy and rugged materials, it still couldn’t take any impact.
I need an “I am being silly” HTML tag, or something.
Although: sure you could make a “tactical camera” – you just make it bigger and uglier. Mine already has a big battery grip and lens shade, why not add an extended rear housing that can hold a spork and maybe a multi-tool. I’m assuming the makers of “tactical cameras” would just make add-on accessories that hang all over it to ruin its balance and make it ugly.
The whole camera bag/non camera bag thing comes down to the size of the carryon I’m taking aboard. Usually I have a briefcase full of 20# of books and laptops, no room for a camera. I am not putting a camera in checked luggage and if I upscale my carryon to fit a camera it’s suddenly huge. Back in the 90s I used to do it backwards: I’d check my laptop and clothes and stuff (I had a metal Halliburton roller) and then carry a big padded bag with books and cameras. I got sick of security always taking apart the metal roller and always going through the padded carryon. After the time I had to explain to the nice German border guard with the H&K MP5 that “NO you cannot look at the lenses for my Hasselblad; I’ll show them to you but you are not putting your grubby mitts on my optics” I gave up.
The one that always makes me laugh uncontrollably is when someone suggests I go do photography someplace exotic (say, India) and do wet plates. *snort* Hahahaha, yeah, I can see the guy asking “what is in that bottle?” and telling him, “That’s potassium cyanide. Smell it!”
Caine@#1:
Glad you’ve made contact, I was gettin’ a bit worried!
It never occurred to me anyone would wonder! I’ve been travelling so much the last 25 years I only think of it as “annoying downtime, incommunicado.”
I had 2 hours at the airport in Frankfurt and started a posting about some political philosophy stuff that I really enjoy and then, when I went to grab the book I was referencing for quotes, I realized I left it on the bed in the hotel room, hours away. (The way I travel I measure things in time not distance) I’m still pissed at myself for making a mistake like that. But I’ll reload the book; I still remember what I wanted to quote.
I need an “I am being silly” HTML tag, or something.
I understood that you meant that as a joke. It’s just that there are degrees of silliness. Some ideas are just silly while others are outright impossible. Suggesting making a tactical umbrella would be silly yet doable (technically it is possible to use an umbrella to hit or stab somebody). Suggesting making a bludgeon camera in just ridiculous. Unlike umbrellas, camera optics are extremely expensive — you don’t want to ruin your $3000 camera by hitting some random stranger with it.
sure you could make a “tactical camera” – you just make it bigger and uglier
My idea for a “tactical camera” would be a hidden miniature spy camera.
why not add an extended rear housing that can hold a spork and maybe a multi-tool
I don’t think anybody would like the idea. As people who shoot full frame cameras with telephoto lenses must have noticed — holding a heavy camera in your hands for hours is a pain.
The whole camera bag/non camera bag thing comes down to the size of the carryon I’m taking aboard.
It’s a lot simpler for me. I only have a camera body and three lenses, all of that gets wrapped in padding and put inside whichever bag I intend to always keep with me (I consider camera gear too expensive to let out of my sight). I don’t take with me anything I can possibly live without, which means that I’m basically traveling with only camera gear and underwear in my bag. My back starts hurting whenever I attempt to carry anything heavy, so I don’t have any other choice.
I bet I could hurt someone with my tiny pocket camera,
even without ducktaping a spork.
But, then, I am a bit nuts.
chigau@#6:
I bet I could hurt someone with my tiny pocket camera,
even without ducktaping a spork.
With low-mass objects it’s all about velocity.
Choice of target is also important.
chigau@#8:
There you go with the strategy, again…
Is it wrong that I looked at that first image and immediately thought of the Skyrim map screen?