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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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Features

Gray Malin’s Surreal Images of Summer Items in the Arctic

Chris Gampat
No Comments
11/21/2014
3 Mins read

Two Flamingos

All images by Gray Malin. Used with permission.

Not many people choose to venture to the Arctic–but if they did then they’d surely try to bring something to remind them of warmer times. That’s part of the influence of Gray Malin’s Antarctica: the White Continent. Gray used juxtaposition to make summery items stand out amongst the ice floes, glaciers, and the barren snow.

We talked to Gray about travelling to the Arctic, the idea and inspiration behind the project, and location scouting in the frigid cold.

Phoblographer: Tell us about how you became a photographer.

Swan Ice Bridge

Gray: Practice. When I was young I photographed the world around me and learned the art of composition. When I discovered the dark room, I fell in love with the magic of seeing an image appear in a developing tray. As the photographic world adjusted to digital it made it easier to share my vision with others through the internet and as a result, helped me build an international audience. At the end of the day, I became a photographer because I like to make work that people want to live within and see in their home or office every single day.

Two Beach Balls Triptych

Phoblographer: What gave you the idea to juxtapose these objects with the Arctic?

Gray: I had shot a body of work around the beach on six of the seven continents and wanted to figure out a way to incorporate the beach in Antarctica. Throughout the brainstorming process, I was guided by the group of National Geographic explorers and realized I was very limited to what I could actually bring in my luggage to the white continent. Therefore I began to focus on the simple elements and using them in a powerful way to create work that translated elements of the beach against the stark frozen arctic landscape.

Phoblographer: Doing a project like this requires lots of thought and planning. What was the toughest part?

Stanchion

Gray: Besides narrowing it down to only 80 lbs of props/equipment (see above), it was truly dangerous out in the exposed elements. This is a quote from my journal one day on the shoot:

“If you can imagine for a moment boating around by zodiac in a small bay-type area full of thousands of pieces of floating ice that are melting and falling apart every minute. Now, imagine winds and currents causing the ice to move constantly with total unpredictable results. Now imagine floating around in this ice land throwing out beach balls with a string attached and having the wind take it like a kite before it falls into a conglomerate of pack ice or lands in front of a giant iceberg. Just imagine the insanity of launching an 8 foot swan boat out into the swirling currents underneath an iceberg that resembles a gigantic archway. It was all so crazy!”

Phoblographer: Tell us about the gear used to shoot these images.

Rainbow-Umbrella-White

Gray: I shot with a Nikon primarily, a secondary Canon and a Go Pro to create this video.

Phoblographer: How did you scout the locations for the images?

Gray: I primarily worked with the team at National Geographic who led the expedition but they made it very clear that weather changes in a moment in Antarctica so there was no guarantee of anything whatsoever. One funny thing was they sent me a link to a Sport Illustrated article where they had photographed model Kate Upton in a few of the locations we would be visiting– and surely, the images were really helpful for scouting the landscape!

Neon Beach Ball Icebergs

Blue-Tube

Beach Ball Iceberg Horizon

antarctica: the white continent arctic Gray Malin photos sports illustrated summer
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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