An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

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Duplo
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An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Duplo »

Well,

After having made my introduction in words, I might as well make my introduction in photos,
I have seen names among here that I know from other forums, so to those of you, my apologies if some of these photos are known to you already.

Now Greenland for the most part is covered by the inland ice (86%) and the island it self is roughly the sie of 1/4 of the US, so that makes for a whole lot of ice and it is home for the most active glaciers in the world.

Save for the Southern most parts, the climate is extremely dry and known as arctic desert, mean next to no vegetation (i.e. trees are non exsistant up here) leaving mainly Rock, water and for a large amount of the time Ice and snow.

That said, I adore this arctic paradise of mine and consider myself lucky to live here.
So without further ado, eight reasons for me to love the landscape up here:

The aurora borealis:
Image

The icebergs:
Image

in all kinds of shapes:
Image

The blistering cold winters sunsets and icebows:
Image

The steep glacier walls:
Image

And the stunning entry points to the huge Inland ice:
Image

Not to mention the endless view across the 1000km wide icecube:
Image

Or the dark winter days:
Image

and finall our colourful spring:
Image

For those of you that have not already grown tired of images like these, there is quite a few more here:
http://main.duplophotography.com/f647949793

Thanks for looking :)
Thomas
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
Lil Judd
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Lil Judd »

Beautiful images. But as someone who lives in Los Angeles dealing with Global Warming - - do you notice it there? Satellite pictures show it's melting.....

So beautiful & just stunning imagery

Lil :-)
Lil :-)
Wishing you Golden Light & willing subjects. My ever evolving galleries can be seen at http://lilknytt.zenfolio.com/
ddk
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by ddk »

Beautiful images all and I'm sure that you worked hard for each and every one of them but the sunset is my favorite. I have never seen a sunset like this or even an image of it before, great job!

david
Duplo
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Duplo »

Lil Judd wrote:Beautiful images. But as someone who lives in Los Angeles dealing with Global Warming - - do you notice it there? Satellite pictures show it's melting.....

So beautiful & just stunning imagery

Lil :-)
Thank you Lil first of all.

Have not been in LA for years.

Ohh, the global warming question is such a difficult question to answer for me, not because I do nto want to, but let me try to explain. Now what I am about to write is related to the Greenlandic indland ice, the big ice cube in the middle of greenland and our glaciers, with regards to the sea ice and other more global effects i have little knowledge and not too many people to ask.

It is true, that compared the beginning of last century, 1910-20, then the glaciers and inland ice has retracted significantly, what we saw with our own eyes when hiking the edges of the ice cap last summer, was according to the scinetists and locals the moraine set in the earli 1800's, so compared to a century ago, there has been a drastic change, however compared to two centuries ago, we are at status quo. this makes me a ilttle weary as to wether it is global warming, a part of a natural cycle or a combination.
Last winter was the strongest winter in more than 20 years up here, wile this winter has been a lot milder.
Snow is currently falling outside my window and I have spend the day snowboarding, now had I been living in the mountains that would not have been out of the ordinary, but we snowboard from roughly 500 meters down to sea level.
I think Nuuk is one of the few places in the world where you have an ocean view while snowboarding :)

The issues has been clouded further by a lot of outright wrong reports from Greenland, we have had a multitude of politicians from around the world comming here, being photographed near the icefiord outside Ilulissat, home of the worlds most active glacier, saying; "Look at all that ice in the fiord, the inland ice is melting!"
Problem is that these glaciers have always been producing icebergs in huge sizes this is due to the pressure from the weight of the inland ice and not surface melting per se. so while true, it is not directly related to global warming and the melting of the sea ice as such.
I recently saw a documentary on discovery, where the journalist, while walking along the inland ice, said; "you can see from the brown colour that the ice is melting" The ice does get a brown colour during summer, not because of the melting, but because of the silt from the moraine being carried onto the edges of the ice with the wind. you will see this as dark layers in the 5th photo in my post.

All of this has lead to me being very cautious when talking global warming.
To add to it, recent study from the danish weather service has even questioned a lot of the calculations that we base the global warming theory on, so forgive me this loose answer, but things up here is a lot less black and white on the subject.

Got kind of long winded here, but I hope you understand why :)
Thomas
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
Duplo
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Duplo »

ddk wrote:Beautiful images all and I'm sure that you worked hard for each and every one of them but the sunset is my favorite. I have never seen a sunset like this or even an image of it before, great job!

david
Thank you David, greatly appreciate your kind words.

One of my all time favourites and it is not a common sight up here either btw :)
Thomas
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
Lil Judd
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Lil Judd »

Thomas,

I do understand. Global Warming is a confusing issue. Last summer we had temps at 48 degrees C down in my arena in the shade. We've not ever had it that warm. It was insufferable. Walking through the arena with the horses during the day - it was simply hard to take a breath - I could not ride them for weeks at a time. But - the ecliptic path the Earth takes around the Sun has an impact on this as well. Still I think about the fact that the Eskimo have dolphins to deal with - animals they have no name for because they're not supposed to be up there.... Add they can't fish like they traditionally do as they will go through the melting ice. Now add the plight of the Polar bears & the Walruses.

I better stop here - - I did not mean to make this discussion happen.....

Your shots are beautiful & as a Swede in Los Angeles - I love seeing these landscapes here. Stunning & enjoy. :-) Welcome to the forum.

Lil :-)
Lil :-)
Wishing you Golden Light & willing subjects. My ever evolving galleries can be seen at http://lilknytt.zenfolio.com/
Guy Van Hooveld
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Guy Van Hooveld »

wonderful pictures, you get incredible opportunities thanks to the special quality of the light you get there...

please keep posting.
Guy Van Hooveld
Nikon equipment, semi-pro photographer My website http://www.techniphoto.com My wiki http://www.techniphoto.com/wiki
DavidLake
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Throwing my pictures all away :)

Post by DavidLake »

WOW!!!

If I could just give up my life an move to Greenland... Do they need another wedding photog? :)

These are fundamentally the reason people by a camera - that says it all...
(NPS, WPPI, PPA)
Duplo
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Duplo »

@lil:
You are too kind :) and as a Dane living in Greenland, it means a lot that you like my images.
And please no need to feel bad about making a discussion like this happen, it is as relevant as anything else I kan think of.
But you are right that such a discussion likely would belong in its own thread in a different forum ;)

@Guy:
Thank you, greatly appreciated.
We are blessed with some light to die for up here, as well as some pretty stiff winters, doing multiple day outdoor assignments during winter while fun, makes one realise that the freezer back home would be nice and warm in comparison :)

Well Stany let me in the door, so you guys are kind of stuck with me posting ;)

@David:
You are way too kind, but I sincerely appreciate the compliment.
I am sure a talented wedding photographer like you would make it anywhere.
Not too many weddings up here though, with a total population of 56.000 (entire Greenland) I suspect it would be hard doing full time ;)
Thomas
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
Vincent De Vos
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Simply gorgeous...

Post by Vincent De Vos »

...nature photography. Thanks for posting this beaufiful photos. Specially the first one is nearly like unreal...
A question: Out of the fact that the scenery is very special and beautiful, how do you people over there deal with the cold? Isn't it boring after several years in permanent snow and ice? I used to have that boring feeling in Belgium because it used to rain all the time here, lately with cloimat change things seem to change here, well progress to a little warmer climat...
Passioned by beautiful pictures, not a very active photographer though...
Regards,
Vincent

PS I use google translate a lot to write better English. So, if mistake, I's google, not me. ;)
Duplo
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Duplo »

Thank you Vincent, I really do appreciate your kind words.

the first one is unique to me as well, Auroras are not easy to catch, but this time around the actually almost posted for me, at least for just long enough to get this image.

Well winter up here is long, but we are not permanently covered with snow where I live, summer it is just rock and water with a tiny amount of flora.
We are now in early may and yesterday we had a fine blizzard passing by us, slopes are still open and considering that snowcannons are not used. Usually June spells the end of the snow, but we have had a blizzard on midsummer night one year :D
The snow slowly returns in October or November, varying a bit from year to year in an irregular pattern.
So we do have a short but reasonably warm summer and mosquitoes unlike anything I have seen anywhere before.
As a wintersport freak i love being here and so far love the nature, but i have only been here for 3½ year or so, so I am still a newcommer.
Being a native Dane I hear you on the rain thing, probably one of the reasons i love being up here so much, at least we have real winters :)
So snow mobile driving, skiing, snowboard, nordic skiing or hiking in snowshoes are common winter activities up here.
A little further north ice fishing and dogsledding are popular activities (and most often combined).

Thanks again for commenting
Thomas
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
ChrisBergstrom
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by ChrisBergstrom »

Wow, these are amazing! The one with the city down below and the lights in the snow is my favorite, but they are all really great shots! Congratulations... I can't wait to see more photos from you.

Chris
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Bravo à Duplo!!!

Post by JPBajerski »

je suis émerveillé par les photos absolument magnifiques du Groenland!!!!
Bravo à Duplo!!!
bajy
Duplo
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Duplo »

Thank you Chris,
One of my favourites too. Very typical for winter in the Greenlandic capital.

Have a bunch of new stuff comming soon, but have another 3 day assignment starting friday evening 2 hours flight north, so it may be a little while before I get around to posting again.

-----------------------------

Thank you so much Bajy,
My french unfortunately leaves a lot to be desired :)
but if I read you right, you liked what you saw and that I do appreciate.
Thomas
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
ADeVos
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by ADeVos »

Incredible beautiful landscapes, the first one is out of this world. :o
Congratulations

Image
Greetings from Belgium
Andre
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Re: An introduction to the Greenlandic Landscape

Post by Roland-BE »

The "aurora borealis" picture is magnificent, the other pictures splendid...
Greetings,
Roland
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