Emperors of the ice
Emperor penguins are the subject of a stunning new book by wildlife photographer Sue Flood. Steve Fairclough discovers the story behind it
Wildlife photographer Sue Flood talks to AP about her stunning new book on emperor penguins
Despite her sunny demeanour, Sue Flood is clearly a driven woman. After telling one of her schoolteachers in her native North Wales that she would make wildlife films with David Attenborough when she grew up, and being firmly told ‘No one gets to do that’, she went on to do exactly that.
Her path to working for the BBC’s Natural History Unit came via studying Zoology at Durham University, and volunteering for wildlife and diving projects in Australia and Bermuda, among others. Sue explains, ‘ Those sorts of things helped me to get my foot in the door at the BBC back in 1993. I went from being a researcher to assistant producer, producer and director.’ Her impressive CV includes working on Planet Earth and the original The Blue Planet TV series but, after an 11-year stint at the BBC, she decided to switch to shooting still images instead of moving ones.
Sue reveals, ‘I was really fortunate. I was in the right place to photograph two bits of behaviour when I was working on The Blue
Planet, both of which hadn’t really been documented before. One was killer whales hunting grey whales, in Monterey Bay in California, and the other was polar bears hunting belugas [whales]. I managed to get stills of these and it led to the killer whale and grey whale story being my first article for BBC Wildlife – that was about 21 years ago.’
Sue continues, ‘I wanted to go out on a high with the BBC so I decided, after 11 years, to see if I could make a go of photography. I finished on a high with Planet Earth, held my nose and jumped.’
Among her photographic heroes were polar photography legends Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley, so it’s little surprise that she was drawn to shooting in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. The first fruit of this endeavour was Sue’s 2011 book Cold Places, and her new book Emperor: The Perfect Penguin is her first book since. It features more than 160 images of the world’s largest penguin taken in the Antarctic over a period of 10 years – a true labour of love. Some of the emperor images in the book date back to 2008, and Sue worked with book designer Simon Bishop to help make the final image selection.
Equipment and workflow
Sue originally had an old manual Nikon camera and used a Nikonos V for her underwater shooting. She explains, ‘I worked in Japan in 1993 and went into a camera store to get a new camera. I ended up switching to Canon and I’ve been with Canon ever since. I now shoot with an EOS-1D X Mark II. I’ve got a 5DS R and 5D Mark III, although I want to upgrade to a 5D Mark
IV. I use Gitzo tripods and I’ve got a Seacam [underwater] housing. I love the 1D X II for wildlife; it’s fantastic.’
Even when braving the extremes of the Antarctic, Sue always leaves herself some time for a daily image edit. ‘I’m downloading every day, so I’ll import via Lightroom. I’ve got everything backed up and I’ll sort keywords and so on so everything is sorted in a daily folder. Then I will make an initial sort of pre-edit of my favourite images from a shoot.’
She adds, ‘I then work with a fantastic chap called Stephen Johnson from Copyright Image Limited; he’s great with Lightroom and Photoshop, etc. I will make an initial selection and then I will leave it to him. He will edit for me if there’s anything to be cleaned up, etc. I always say it’s a lot more fun taking photographs than it is working on the computer.’
Extreme working conditions
Working in the polar regions can be very challenging. Sue says, ‘It can be everything – from being comfortable, where you’re living on a ship and you’ve got access to hot meals, showers and loos, that sort of level of comfort. Then a fantastic trip I did two years ago, which features heavily in the book, was camping in the Weddell Sea for about five weeks on the sea ice in a little, tiny, unheated tent at about -25°C – that’s the other extreme.’
She adds, ‘When you’re shooting it doesn’t matter how you’re living – it’s still cold, especially if you’re doing things like diving, which is a whole new level of discomfort in the polar regions. You have to be very careful when you’re outside for long periods of time to look after yourself and not get frostnip or frostbite.’
Photographically, challenges such as extreme glare mean there’s sometimes a need to deploy polarising filters, but there are some benefits to the polar weather extremes. Sue explains, ‘In terms of shooting, the nice thing is that often you’re down there when it’s 24-hour daylight – whether you’re in the high Arctic in June or July or the Antarctic around about January or February – where you get these very, very long days. It’s lovely.’
When quizzed about some of the stand-out images from Emperor: The Perfect Penguin, Sue chooses one of two parents snuggling on either side of their chick. She reveals, ‘It wasn’t the most difficult [image to get] physically but it was the most difficult in terms of execution. I’ve been very fortunate to spend a lot of time photographing emperor penguins and the image where there’s two of them standing together with the little chick in between… that’s how I framed the shot; I haven’t cropped it. One penguin was standing with the chick nearby and then the other one returned from the sea and it started feeding it. Then they shuffled together for literally a couple of seconds; I got a few shots and then they shuffled apart.’
She adds, ‘One of the luckiest shots was the one looking through the iceberg – like the grotto in an iceberg shot that Frank Hurley took. That was lucky because someone had kindly pointed out the hole in the iceberg to me and I thought, ‘It would be fantastic if you got a penguin walking along.’ Then, about two hours later, finally it was in the right spot and I got it, so that was lucky. I always say that, yes, there is luck involved sometimes but the harder I work the luckier I get.’
Getting close
Although many of Sue’s images of emperors are close-up, there are
strict rules about how close you can initially get to the animals. Helicopters have to land at least one mile from the colony and then any visitors – photographers, filmmakers or adventure tourists – have to flag out a route and walk towards the penguins.
Sue explains, ‘ The lovely thing is that if you sit tight and let the penguins approach you that’s absolutely fine, as long as you’re not approaching them. Because they’re so unbelievably curious you can end up in a situation where sometimes you literally have them touching you – it’s just incredible.
‘I was trying, picture-wise, to get everything from seeing them as tiny, little dots like ants – where I shot from the helicopter from a sufficient height so as not to disturb them – through to these extreme close-ups of the feathers where I’d shot with a 300mm lens with a 2x converter. I like the idea of going from everything from the extreme close-up to the aerial view where they’re tiny in the frame.’
As to why emperors should be called ‘the perfect penguin’ from the 18 species, Sue explains, ‘Emperors are the biggest penguins and they’re the only ones that have this extreme lifestyle where they spend their whole lives either at sea or on the sea ice. They’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever photographed in 30 years of doing my job.’