"[narrator] 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." "[Peter] This is just one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen!" "[narrator] Peter then follows in the footsteps of Frank Hurley - the pioneering photographer on Shackleton's expedition to the south a century ago." "[Peter] 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." "[narrator] The pinnacle for Peter will be the untamed wilderness of South Georgia and to capture her story in a whole new light." "[Peter] While Antarctica is undoubtedly an amazing location, for me, the highlight has always been South Georgia." "[uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music]" "[Peter] 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." "[narrator] 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." "[Peter] 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." "[narrator] 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." "[ice cracking]" "[gentle music] [gentle music]" "[Peter] 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." "[gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music]" "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." "[gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music] [narrator] 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." "[gentle music]" "[Peter] 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." "[gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music]" "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." "[gentle music]" "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." "[narrator] 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." "[Peter] 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." "[rumbling]" "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." "[Ben] 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." "[Peter] 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." "[Ben] 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."" "[Peter] 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." "[Peter] 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." "[narrator] 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." "[Peter] 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." "[uplifting music] [uplifting music]" "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." "[narrator] 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." "[Peter] 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." "[narrator] 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." "[gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music]" "You can spend days and days just wandering around the Salisbury Plains, there's so much happening;" "it's a photographer's paradise." "[gentle music] [gentle music]" "[Peter] 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." "[penguin calls] [penguin calls]" "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." "[penguin calls] [penguin calls] [gentle music]" "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." "[gentle music]" "[Peter] 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." "[animal sounds]" "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." "[gentle music] [gentle music]" "[Peter] 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." "[gentle music] [gentle music] [uplifting music]" "[Peter] 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." "[uplifting music] [uplifting music] [narrator] 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." "[gentle music]" "[Peter] 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." "[uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music] [uplifting music]"