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REALA 500D AT WORK
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PONTING
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Herbert Ponting was the offi-
cial photographer/cinematog- “rapher chosen by Captain
R.F. Scott to accompany his second expedition to the Antarctic.
The Terra Nova expedition, named after the boat that carried the twenty- three men from Plymouth, ended in tragedy when Scott and four of his col- leagues perished on their return jour- ney from the South Pole.
But before the men set off in the summer of 1911/12, they built a large hut at a place they named Cape Evans. From here between 1910 and 1911 they conducted a variety of expedi- tions to gather scientific data. Throughout this time, Ponting docu- mented life in the freezer, fully 80 years before David Attenborough’s famous series.
Herbert Ponting spent the next twenty odd years struggling to finance and edit what turned out to be a remarkable epic. In 1935 he released 90 degrees South.
But just how did he do it? How did he manage to do such extraordinary work with such basic pioneering equip- ment? What is it like to work in the extreme cold? I was about to find out...
In the winter of 2001 October Films were commissioned by Channel 4 and PBS to make a documentary, The Coldest March, based on a new book by an American meteorologist. Susan Solomon’s work on the ozone layer had led her to Antarctica where she became fascinated by the tales of the early polar explorers.
She was aware of Scott’s reputa- tion as a bit of a bumbler who perhaps didn’t have the ruthless single mind- edness of say, Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who reached the
pole 6 weeks before Scott, and suc- cessfully returned to Norway.
But she was nevertheless puzzled that the two teams had seemingly endured rather different weather con- ditions. Her meticulously researched book contends that the temperatures Scott and his party endured on their return from the pole were freakishly cold even for Antarctica... and that no amount of preparation could have saved the men from their eventual fate at the end of March 1912.
October Films approached the New Zealand Antarctic Survey Team to allow a team to travel to Antarctica to shoot some of the most salient sites of this story. The Cape Evans Hut was crucial. Requests like these are usually made about 18 months in advance. Not unusually for a film company, October wanted to go immediately, and incredibly the New Zealanders had room - for just one person!
So a few weeks later I found myself in front of an irate check-in clerk at Heathrow. Two hundred and fifty kilo- grams of gear... on my own.
The Antarctic Heritage Trust is responsible for the upkeep of all the historical sites in Antarctica. They told me that they would allow me to film in the huts on one condition... no lights.
I had recently spoken to a camera- man friend of mine who had just been to a demonstration of the new Fuji Reala 500 Daylight stock and thought that this would be ideal for what was essentially a wholly unknown situa- tion... natural light only and no chance for a scout.
The Cape Evans Hut is only 20 miles or so from the modern day Scott Base which is the operations centre for the NZ Antarctic team. Still
it took two trips to this cold remote place before the helicopter could land... strong winds and lousy condi- tions scuppered the first attempt. We only just made it in second time round. The American pilot waved goodbye and then he was gone in a swirl of mist and snow.
To walk into Scott’s hut at Cape Evans is like walking into another time, another era. The 90 winters of freezing conditions have preserved the men’s belongings and the artefacts so per- fectly that one almost expects to see a cup of steaming cocoa on the table and a smoking pipe in the ashtray.
Outside it is minus 20 degrees C... inside perhaps minus 15.
In this long journey that is a life, there are sometimes moments of gen- uine connection with something that is not quite explicable... where our fil- ing system goes awry...
I had such a moment sitting at Scott’s table with my hands in the changing bag, my gaze started across the room. An old reindeer sleeping bag, a pair of boots, bits of scientific equipment.
Finally my eyes settled on a door half open at the far end of the room. There hanging on a bent nail was Ponting’s changing bag. I just stopped what I was doing. I don’t know how long I sat there thinking about what these men had done all those years ago...
As I sat with my director, Henry Singer, in the warmth of the telecine suite in Camden a month later these complete- ly beautiful images flashed up before us. I was back there for a moment.
The snow outside the windows in the hut had acted like a giant bounce board, filling the room with the most exquisite soft light which wrapped
around the objects in the room creat- ing a series of Victorian still lives.
My Aaton, my Optar prime lenses and this very responsive Fuji film had recorded the scene in this lonely place with stunning richness and clarity.
I spent about 15 hours in the hut over a period of two or three days. In that time I never exposed a single shot at anything other than T1.3. Sometimes things I saw were rather too dark to shoot, and rather than rate the film at 1000 ASA or above, I decided to shoot at 12 or 6 fps. I was not in a hurry.
When I told the telecine operator that he was looking at 500 ASA film he was so astonished, he called his col- leagues up from the lab to have a look. They, in turn, were rather impressed. Rich browns and faded greens, old mustard yellow hues
Photos: Jonathan Partridge, crew and dogs in the footsteps of Herbert Ponting in Antarctica
EXPOSURE • 20 & 21