Where the sun never sets

[C Elegans]

A beautiful lady I met out on the pack ice

Luckily, she was not hungry.

[C Elegans]

Getting arty on the shores of Tineteqilaaq.

[C Elegans]

Getting arty in the mountains:

[C Elegans]

Terribly over-exposured, but in the narrow fiord you can see three white dots that are small ice bergs, and to the left of them two dots that are the French inuit in his kayak (the one I had borrowed earlier that day) and his boat where his wife was fishing.

The slopes were very steep to climb and it was a very hot day, I felt like a gore-tex baked potato (you don't want to take off all your clothes because of the mosquitos, I'm actually allergic to mosquito bites )

[C Elegans]

One from Snaefallsnas, at the West coast of Iceland, just because I like the composition of this picture. I leave to Silur to post pictures from Iceland, since it was his first visit there.

[dragon wench]

@C.E Thank you for sharing these... they are so very breathtaking...

[C Elegans]

Thank you DW To me, there is something very special with the Arctics, something I have a need for and that can't be found anywhere else. If I was only allowed to visit let's say 5 places on earth for the rest of my life, Greenland would be one of them.

[T'lainya]

Great pics CE

[Tamerlane]

@ CE
That last pic you posted was absolutely amazing. As you said, it had a nice composition.

[fable]

I love that one on the shores of Tineteqilaaq, @CE. Nice job! What kind of camera, film and exposure are you using? The results are great.

[C Elegans]

Thanks everybody for your kinds comments about my pictures

@Fable: Ehrm, those pictures were shot with my tiny little digital Sony DSC U20, 2 Mpixel, a typical "party camera" with a fix 35' lens, fully automatic . I have always claimed I can't shoot any decent landscape pictures with that type of camera, especially since it has no viewfinder but only the LCD display, which is totally useless in such extreme light conditions as the Arctics in summertime - but maybe I was wrong!

When I am seriously out to take photos I always use a good old mechanical single lens reflex. No digital cameras can match them yet IMO. I use either a Nikon F3 or FM-2 (ancient, I know, but I prefer to use fully manual exposure anyway, landscapes don't run very fast) and only colour positive film, usually Kodachrome or other Kodak films (since I prefer yellowish colour cast before greenish). In extremely bright conditions like sand desert, alpine or glacial environment, I use 25-50 ASA (50 ASA = 18 DIN). For many years I have used my father's 35-105 zoom lens, but he recently wanted it back since he is taking up photography again himself, so I am currently looking for a used lens with the same focal lenght.

[Scayde]

Fabulous pics CE, I can see why you are enamored but the arctic ! Its stark beauty is absolutely breathtaking, and rather other-worldly. I especially loved the one of Snaefallsnas. While it is not the most dramatic, there is something about the place where the sea meets the cliffs that has always stirred me. Perhaps the most beautiful one was the one you called arty...LOL....it does remind me a bit of an Ansel Adams in color

BTW, I agree with you re: cameras....digital are convenient, but they just can't replace a good shutter+film system yet

I read what you said about the influx of modern culture into the inuit. I know if there was a sad part of your trip, it had to be coming face to face with the loss of a culture in progress. How sad it is that we can't partake of and enjoy the old ways without bringing coruption to them in the process

[der Moench]

Originally posted by C Elegans
A beautiful lady I met out on the pack ice

Luckily, she was not hungry.

Polar Bears are the awesomest!!!!

She may have been hungry, but figured you weren't worth the time. Unless a p-bear is very hungry, they will only eat the fat of the seals they hunt. You, who have almost no fat at all, would not prove very appetizing for one such as her. And it is just as well.

Peace.

[Tom]

Dirty rotten CE - I want to go to greenland (must bring food though).

Sounds like you had a great trip, I am quite jealous. Did you take any picks of people?

[C Elegans]

@Scayde: I also love the meeting between sea and land, and I have always loved the sort of broken up coastlines with vertical cliffs and sea stacks. I used to love climbing on sea cliffs when I was younger. If you ever go to Britain to visit for instance certain very nice SYM:ers who live there, allow yourself time enough to make a trip to Scotland and see the spectacularly beautiful sea cliffs at the Scottish Islands
Ansel Adams? In my dreams, perhaps

Regarding the social situation at Greenland, that is certainly the only sad part of the trip. In the smaller villages like Tineteqilaaq the meeting of new and old is very evident, and to me it contains both interesting dynamics as well as sadness because you know the traditional culture will be lost soon. In Tasiilaaq, the biggest village with a population of 1800, very few people live in the traditional way, the transformation has progressed much further and caused obvious social problems. People there want to live as "modern Greenlanders", ie the European way. They want to have a job, a house, they want their kids to go to school, not to become hunters or seal-skin dress makers. But there are no jobs, because society has not yet reached the phase where you have industry or administration, so a majority of Tasiilaaq's population in working age is on social welfare. Drinking is not the great problem it used to be on the West coast inm the 1970's when they went though this transformation, but from what I could see and what I heard, it is a problem nonetheless as it often is when social problems are overwhelming.

The bringing of corruption to native cultures, was a topic I discussed extensively with Christian, the German antropologist I spent several evenings with. When he did his PhD in the 70's, he had this idealistic and naive view of that was prevalent during that time, and he also thought studying different native cultures would hold the key to understanding of human behaviour - an idea that at the time was the dominating way of thinking in the social sciences. He did not only study the Thule Eskimoos of course, no, he made long journeys to Central Africa, Polynesia, the Amazon Basin, New Guinea, Indonesia, you name it - and he did was every culture antropoligist at the time dreamt of: he discovered a previously unknown population. (He has pubslished a scientific article about it, which I am going order as soon as I find it, I have the reference). Somewhere - he has never and will never tell anyone outside his research team who were with him exactly where - in Asia, he encountered a cave-living population. He had been looking for them for two years then. After this marvellous "discovery", he totally changed his professional life. Over the years, the idea had grown in his head that antropological studies are not sufficient in order to gain understanding of human nature. He started to feel it was only scratching at the surface. He felt you must go inside the brain, inside the genes, only studying overt behaviour is not enough...And after having met the cave-dwellers, he realised you cannot touch them without changing them - and is it worth it? For what? So he quit antropology, started working as a political advisor in Indonesia and started up a company where he works as a tour leader to exotic places.

@Monk: From what I have heard, polar bears eat only the skin and the blubber of the seal when the hunt is very good, normally they eat the whole seal. However, hunting was very good in Ittoqqortoormiak. Humans are not preferred prey for polar bears, however, they will eat humans if they are hungry. The most common incidents when humans are eaten, is when a polar bear drifts ashore on a piece of pack ice, and then gets stuck on dry land. On land, there is not much for them to eat, so they may eat humans or whatever land prey they can find.

In any case, I am very happy I got the opportunity to see this beautiful polar bear! She came as close as 10 meters

@Tom: You should definitely go there - bring some dry or canned food, anything, absolutely anything is better than the diet I lived on But it's worth it although all my friends make very disgusted faces when I tell them.

No, I didn't take any pictures of people, I'm a lousy people's photographer, I can only shoot decent landscape pics. I might have a couple of pictures of people from my last Greenland trip 5 years ago though, but they will not be very interesting since the West coast is much more modernised.