Nothing On Earth

[AstralTraveller]

With all the interests in landscape photography on this forum I thought I'd mention a doco presently available on ABC iView called 'Nothing On Earth' about the work of Murray Fredericks. Here is a photographer who is willing to go that extra 1000km to get the shot he wants. This is the story of his trips to the Greenland ice cap to photograph 'space'. A difficult and at times dangerous (eg polar bears) journey to get some truly awesome shots. I enjoyed it more than I expected I would. :thumbsup:

[rogerg]

We watched it last night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. While it could be viewed as just a documentary about one photographer and hence a bit self-promoting, I found it inspiring, interesting, and had my attention until the end.

I very much like his style of photography.

I also agree with his thoughts that the landscape photography arena became saturated several years ago, and so similarly strive for a unique photo which is less landscape and more uniquely captivating. I suppose tending to more abstract in some ways.

One thing I wonder is how (if) someone such as himself makes a profit on such adventures. The cost has to have been significant for 4 (5?) trips to the north pole, and everything I see these days suggests it is only getting harder to find people willing to pay for photographs, as capturing good quality photographs becomes so much more achievable for the masses. Obviously he has exhibitions of his work but there still needs to be people willing to pay significant money for the exhibition pieces.

Anyhow, I think the doco was well worth the watch and would recommend it to anyone interested in photography :thumbsup: I'd love to see it in higher quality than iView, to get full appreciation of the scenes.

[mithrandir]

I missed "Nothing on Earth" but spotted "Salt" being repeated while channel surfing.
The NoE DVD will be available in July. http://nothingonearth.com/shop
You can get "Salt" on DVD from there too.

Fredericks is definitely prepared to suffer for his art.

[gary]

I had seen 'Salt' previously and watched 'Nothing on Earth' the other night.

The journey by dog sled is the most interesting chapter in the film and I found the
visit to the abandoned DEW Line (Distant Early Warning) RADAR station fascinating.

Built in the late 50's, the DEW Line stations were an incredible part of the Cold War.
When you consider that 63 of them were built in just a few short years,
stretching over 10,000km, the logistics were mind boggling. Tens of thousands of
people were involved and the imperative of building them so quickly meant that
construction work would also occur during the dark arctic winters.

The station depicted in the documentary would have been for alerting to a bomber
attack. Shortly after the US built a parallel system called BMEWS (Ballistic Missile
Early Warning System) which deployed three stations.

Because snow would accumulate at a rate of over a couple of feet a year at some
of the arctic DEW stations, they were designed with jack-screws and were hoisted up tens
of meters over their lifetimes. They also drifted with the icecap tens of feet a year
and the structural loading of the snow, ice and melt-water raised safety concerns
for the USAF and so they abandoned some of them by the late 80's and early 90's.

The data from all these stations was funneled back to a network of giant computers,
known as SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment). Each consisting of tens
of thousands of vacuum tubes, they epitomized the classic science fiction notion
at the time of giant "electronic brains". They were ahead of their time and their ability
to process RADAR data, process it digitally and display aircraft tracks graphically
was a remarkable achievement.

For interested readers, a declassified cold war documentary on SAGE appears here -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06drBN8nlWg
In particular, the demonstration of how the SAGE system worked starting at 15:47
showcases the sophistication of the system.

[rat156]

Both doccos are still available on ABC iView.

Cheers
Stuart