Associated Press Coverage

Image by AP/Bram Janssen

A photographer from the Associated Press contacted us well after The Guardian ran an article in 2021 about the formation of the Global Glacier Initiative. The goal was to produce a piece that highlighted our work, in article, photograph, and video format, and distribute it to broadcasters worldwide. Naturally, we were enthused by the concept, and it was tentatively agreed to aim for a shoot while on location in Norway.

That plan materialized, and a reporter from Denmark and a photographer from the Netherlands made their way to Norway and shadowed our work for roughly two weeks. We came perilously close to a rather serious problem, as the engine failed a critical inspection at the beginning of the shoot, though some overnight work by two engineers, and the willingness of a Norwegian aircraft owner to part with a hard-to-come-by replacement part meant the aircraft was only out of service for 18 hours.

After that, it was an introduction in the complexities of film shooting for us. Hollywood goes by a 100-to-1 ratio of hours spent to final film produced, which proved to be accurate in this case. Far more work goes into any well-done film production than most realize.

In our case, the first issue was that what was best for film shooting was not ideal for glacier photography. We spent much more time over the glaciers, getting the angles I was looking for, and then getting the angles the videographer wanted, as he was filming from directly behind me, in a different position of the aircraft.

The next complication was the shot that the videographer was after, a composition where my aircraft was heading off to the glaciers, taken from another aircraft, flown by a different pilot. Air-to-air photography is immensely complex to execute, a skill vastly different from photographing stationary objects on the ground. In the end, with the project nearly running out of time, it was completed, and some months later, the result hit the press.

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