Antarctica: The Waking Giant

To the casual observer, the Antarctic ice may look like a lifeless world of white with nothing but sky and frozen matter for months. At an average elevation of 12,000 feet, the visual monotony could seem underwhelming. To the contrary, Antarctica's ice sheet is a powerful entity, alive and dynamic. It is up to 3 million years old; its mass is constantly and unperceptively moving, finally calving to the sea.



Deep in the heart of the continent, it is the variations in cloud cover or the details of the terrain that provide Antarctica's unique photographic opportunity. The only features are ones left by the wind on the ice or the clouds in the sky. In contrast to the interior desert, the coast teems with life, indigenous and resilient to the harshest winters. It is the dominion of whales, birds, penguins, and seals, which evolved, until recently, outside of human contact. "My research there gave me a deeper perspective of the subtle variations taking place at the hands of climate change," says Copeland. "The images I bring back tell the story of a changing environment that spells the oncoming redrawing of the world's map, and all that it implicates."