Because Antarctica often experiences severe weather conditions such as high winds, freezing temperatures, snow and rain, it’s never a good idea to change lenses outside.

Just when you’re taking a lovely landscape shot of an iceberg, you may suddenly spot a whale and need to change lenses. Exposing the camera in freezing conditions is not a sensible option and the only way of getting around this is to bring several camera bodies and several lenses.

This way you wont be exposing the camera and you’ll also be able to change lenses far more quickly – simply pick up the other camera and you’re away! A good tip here is to always test your camera settings prior to shooting as you want to be able to just pick up the camera and know you have the right settings to capture the shot instantly.

See our camera and lens recommendations.

Once again, this is where the extreme cold of Antarctica comes into play. Your camera batteries will lose charge way faster in the cold conditions. In fact, expect about half the normal life of your battery.

Once you have been dropped ashore by one of your zodiacs, you can’t simply pop back to the ship another battery. Therefore, it’s imperative to bring extra batteries with you at all times.

Whilst memory cards are not affected by the cold, you many people find they fill them up quickly because of the constant photo opportunities.

We have also seen memory cards stop working midway through a trip. This can be soul destroying and it’s always a good idea to bring a back up just in case.

Antarctica is a land of extremes. Huge icebergs, towering ice sculptures and abundant wildlife less than 2 metres away are common sights.

Therefore, it’s a good idea to give your viewers a sense of that feeling by showing scale in your photos. By photographing seals, people, kayaks, penguins in your landscape shots, this will serve to demonstrate the scale of the landscape to your viewers.

Another good tip is to use your cruise ship. Although your ship will be large, it will be nothing compared to a huge iceberg!

Most people will tell you that you need to bring a tripod for your Antarctica journey. However, this is not necessarily true.

Tripods are often large and cumbersome and you’ll constantly be dodging people on deck with them. The light is very good in Antarctica and we find that wildlife photographers generally leave them in the cabin after the first few days.

Unless you’re shooting macro, long exposure shoreline images or arty type movement shots, the tripod can stay at home. However, we do recommend bringing a very small travel tripod in case the shot you really want demands a tripod.

See our tripod recommendations.

We always suggest taking two filters – A UV filter and a polarizing filter. The UV filter is basically a protection lens against the elements you may be shooting in.

Whereas the polarizing filter is a must for Antarctica photography as it helps reduce glare and saturates colours. The glare from the snow and sea on bright days can be extreme and a polarizing filter will reduce this significantly and sharpen distant focal points like icebergs, mountains etc.

Remember though, a polarizing filter will darken your shots and you’ll lose about two F stops of light. This is generally fine for landscape shots, however, wildlife photographers should take caution.

Getting the right exposure for Antarctica photography is more difficult than it sounds. Often, cameras have a difficult time reading bright snow which leads to the snow in your images appearing grey!

The dreaded grey snow effect is best avoided by bracketing your exposures. Generally a setting of 3 or 5 brackets at an interval of 1 to 2 stops will get your images showing nice white snow.

You’ll often have to over expose using this settings which will feel wrong, however, just go with it and see what happens. Check out this video for more info.

With so much wildlife it’s often difficult to think of good ways to photograph them! The best rule to remember is to get down to your subjects height.

Both penguins and seals are relatively short creatures. If you stand near them and shoot downwards you’ll find that the shot doesn’t have that wow factor.

Antarctica photography is all about the background. This means getting on the ground and photographing the wildlife from their level. This way you’ll be able to get the landscape behind the wildlife. This is particularly important in a spectacular environment such as Antarctica.

By getting lower you’ll often be able to photograph more of the penguins or seals at once which is also another nice effect.

You’ll often want to get your camera out whilst on a zodiac or kayak. This is the time when you can explore the lesser seen areas of Antarctica and see angles of icebergs you wouldn’t otherwise get to view.

However, zodiacs and kayaks can be bumpy which makes taking photos a bit more difficult, especially when it comes to getting a level horizon. There are two things to remember here. The first is shutter speed. If there is plenty of light use a faster shutter speed as this will stop any blurring from movement.

The second is cropping. If you’re shooting landscape, make sure to zoom out further than the shot requires. This is so when you’re editing back home you’ll have space to crop properly, particularly if your horizon is not level, you’ll be able to rotate the photo slightly and still get the whole image you wanted.