We are now off the Ice, taking a year off to work full-time on getting the "Year on Ice" feature film completed.
I'm at the stage now where I have finally finished rendering all my time-lapse footage from the last 7 years into usable footage from the over 1,000,000 individual photos taken.

In the process I have worn out several cameras, and broken plenty of equipment in the extreme cold.
Occasionally I have gone to recover a camera after leaving it out overnight, and found it tipped over and buried in a snow bank, or worse, face down, lens first in the rocks.
The end result is that I have gathered a lot of great footage. It will be something very unique, there are many sequences that have never been caught on film before.

I currently have a rough cut of just time-lapse footage alone that runs for about 90 minutes, but I plan on cutting about 30 minutes from this, then adding about 30 minutes of regular interviews and other fun footage. Enough to put everything into context for the viewer, but avoiding a running commentary so that people can enjoy the experience of what it is like to spend a year in Antarctica for themselves.

The film should be out later this year with a final total running time around 90 minutes.

The winfly plane flights have come and gone, bringing with them about 350 new people, mail, fresh fruit and veggies, old friends, and new cold and flu viruses to infect us toasty winter-over folk.
The return of the sun is helping to re-energize our T3 addled brains (see the blog entry from this time last year), and general station activities involve everyone getting ready for the start of the summer season at the end of the month.

The first Winfly C-17 plane emerges out of the fog on the runway

Passenger disembarking the plane into the -45 degree air

Transporting the passengers back to McMurdo across the Ice Shelf, our first view the sun in over 4 months as it
briefly skirts the horizon at noon.

Mount Erebus to the north casts a shadow across Mount Discovery to the south-west

Polar Stratospheric Clouds (Nacreous Clouds) in the upper atmosphere being illuminated by the sun below
the horizon. These clouds form when ozone-depleting gasses crystallize in the extreme cold, creating incredible
rainbow hues when the sun hits them.

Nacreous Cloud

Nacreous Cloud behind ice ridge

Nacreous Clouds above Mount Discovery in the twilight

Nacreous Clouds being illuminated by the moon

Moon set over Salient Peak

Aurora above one of the McMurdo fuel tanks. Not too long now and it will be too light at night to see auroras with
the return of the sun.

Moon rise

And lastly, here is a video clip I made up from about 400 individual photos I took last year showing what it is like to fly from Black Island, across the ice shelf, past the Pegasus Airfield and land at McMurdo.
To watch the Hi-Def version follow the link to vimeo...

Fly-Lapse from Anthony Powell on Vimeo.

We ended up with a total of 33 films from 17 different Antarctic Stations
And the winners are...

Best 48Hr Film
Rothera (UK): The Quest of the Golden Roll

Best 48Hr Acting
Mawson (Australia): Mace Perfume

Best 48Hr Cinematography
Bellingshausen (Russia): One Day of Vladimir Fyodorovich's Life

Best 48Hr Screenplay:
Rothera (UK): The Quest of the Golden Roll

Best 48Hr Use of Required Elements
Rothera (UK): The Quest of the Golden Roll

Best Open Category Film
Macquarie Island (Australia): Eradication

Congratulations to everyone.
There were a lot of really great films this year, making it hard to choose.
We had a great time with them here, and hope you did too.

Have a look at the previous post for links to the films to see them for yourself


Aurora over the BFC building the other morning.

The sun is due to start rising today for the first time in 4 months. Yay.

Most the Antarctica bases that took part in the Film Festival had their screenings this weekend, and the votes are beginning to trickle in from all over the continent.
I'll update this entry when the winners are announced.

The films are available to download online at this link...
http://cid-f32c1f3f4fb6d9e5.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Antarctic%20Movies
Note, not all videos are suitable for younger viewers!

For the 48-hour film making section, films had to be made in one weekend, and include
-A roll of toilet paper
-A comedy head piece
-The character of a "Temperamental Continental Chef"
-The line of dialogue "Do you want to buy a dog?"
-The sound of a can opening

Here's a couple of the 48-hour films that are available on youtube and vimeo...

This is the one that Christine & I did at McMurdo...

The temperatures typically drop quite dramatically over the next month or so as we enter what is normally the coldest time of the year here.

In the mean time, we are starting to see signs of the sun returning. There is quite a glow to the north in the middle of the day now, and many of the stars overhead disappear  for an hour or two at noon.

It is just over a month before the sun actually rises again for us.

Last night a group of us went out in a Pisten Bully to take some photos at Castle Rock...

The Pisten Bully parked at the base of Castle Rock, and other photographers setting up cameras

Castle Rock and stars

Shot taken from a time-lapse sequence I did. Mount Erebus with a small aurora behind it, and red steam being lit up by the lava in the crater at it's peak

Back at McMurdo, the satellite dome on the hill back-lit by the northern noon glow

This is an older photo I just found that I didn't realize I had. Looking south, auroras in the sky, with the lights of the Pegasus Airfield out on the Ice Shelf. The runway will be getting rebuilt very shortly in preparation for Winfly.

Moon dog: the halo around the moon caused by ice crystals in the air

We are past mid-winter now.

Mid-winter day is the premiere holiday in Antarctica. The various stations will send greetings to each other to celebrate the middle of the “longest night.”

Special mid-winter dinner celebrations were held at Scott Base and McMurdo, in which the chefs went all out to put on a suitable feast.

We have finally had a few good aurora displays. I filled up about 60Gigs of hard drive space with photos in one afternoon when I was out at Black Island.

Here are a few photos from the last few weeks…

Not too much out of the ordinary going on.
The sun has gone, and won't be back until the end of August.
We had a lot of snow in town after the storms a couple of weeks ago.

The storms were pretty average for down here, but over at Black Island there was a wind gust of 193 knots, that's about 222 mph, only 9 mph lower than the highest wind speed ever officially recorded on the planet on Mount Washington back in 1936.
We regularly have bigger storms out there, but most the time the wind gauges have not been working as they don't last long down here.

Here's a few general catch-up photos...


Looking out from Hut Point across McMurdo Sound in the last of the daylight

Wind whipping up snow off the hills behind McMurdo in the twilight


ANZAC Day dawn service at Scott Base (like Memorial Day in the US).
At this time of the year we don't actually have a "Dawn", as the sun does not rise, so we just do it in the morning.

Driving to Black Island in the blowing snow and the noon twilight

Solar Panels that were ripped off the roof at Black Island in the 222mph wind.
The rest of the facility was not damaged. It was built to last.

Snow that has worked it's way into the Bunk House at Black Island during the storm.
All this snow came in through the cracks in the window seals. There are a couple of armchairs and a diesel preway heater on the right of the picture under the snow.

Long exposure photo of the Black Island Satellite Station

The Milky Way as seen from Black Island. The green in the sky is from some faint auroras

Back at McMurdo, digging hard-packed snow out of the engine compartment after the storm.

Digging vehicles out of the snow next to the Gym entrance.

The back door to building 159 where I work

TV and entertainment unit that was dug out of the snow that got into Hut 10 that I have been asked to look at to see if it will still work.

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Aurora Photography Exposure Guide:
Here's an exposure guide I put together for folks down here to figure out how to take their own aurora photos.
For those of you living in the northern or southern extremes of the planet, it could come in handy...

We have had a lot of stormy weather here lately, so when I was stuck inside the other night I thought I'd run some of my time-lapse star sequences through a photo-stacking application to see how they looked.
Here's a few results from stacking a couple of hundred photos together each time so the stars become streaks in the sky...

Looking up the communications tower at Black Island.
Note how the celestial South Pole is only just slightly away from being directly up.

Wide angle shot of one of the dorm buildings at McMurdo, with a small green aurora overhead

View of McMurdo Station form out on the sea ice. The extra-bright streak on the left is from the moon.

Bust of Admiral Byrd with the American flag on the left moving about in the wind

The last plane left about 5 weeks ago now. There are 153 people at McMurdo, and 26 at Scott Base for the winter.
The sun is actually rising and setting at this time of the year, but the days are getting shorter by about 15 minutes each day. In 3 weeks from now the sun will go down, and we will not see it for another 4 months.

We have been running into a lot of problems this year with badly melted ice out on the Ross Ice Shelf between here and Black Island.
This makes it very hard for me to do my job here in the winter. Because we have no helicopters available, it means we have to drive across the ice shelf to get to our satellite earth station at Black Island to do any work required. While I can control all the equipment remotely, sooner or later hands-on work is required to keep things running smoothly.
We have been trying for the last couple of weeks to get there, but have had to turn back because the ice shelf melted out so badly this summer. It is the worst I have seen it in the last 10 years.
We will be heading out again next week to see if we can get through on an alternative route.

Here's a few photos from my last trip out...

Sunrise on our last trip out to try and find a safe route to Black Island, looking north towards Mt Erebus.

Looking south-west towards Mt Discovery.
The exposed deeper blue ice (on the right of the picture) often still has water pockets not far below the surface at this time of the year due to a glass-house type effect from the sun over summer. It is one of the things we need to be wary of, and will drill down through the ice to check the thickness in any doubtful spots before driving on it.

Raised up volcano shaped domes like this form when water pockets below the surface re-freeze, forcing the ice up.
Notice the noon sun is only a few degrees above the horizon now.


Driving into some of the melted-out ice fields, and it only got worse from here on out, so we had to turn back.
Even the Pisten Bullies cannot drive up chest-high walls of rock-solid ice.