Photography Master. Sort of...

It's not been quite a week since the last post but there have been some pretty awesome pictures taken the last few days with the light conditions improving. I would seriously recommend that everyone reading this checks out my cohorts posts too, they've done awesomely!

SO, 

Moving on to the pictures that I've been taking the last couple of days, I've finally gotten my head around the processing that comes with the "RAW" file types that are an option on the dSLR that I was lent for this trip. So without much further ado, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

So a little explanation behind the pictures taken, starting from the top. We have the full UNIS complex, an interesting quite well designed building if you ask me. Then there are a couple of pictures of a group of reindeer that I managed to get very close to, they were just chilling outside UNIS one day and so I naturally took advantage of this and went to take a closer look. A few scenic shots of the area in and around Longyearbyen follow, giving a bit of a hint to the beauty that is quite literally on our doorsteps. The slightly yellowish tinge images are from a short walk that Noel, Heather, and I took to just get out of town for a while, cabin fever is a real thing here! The next few images are from the hike that we took yesterday, we walked up to the airport and off up a track that took us to the KSAT site past the famous seed vault (see picture with green funky lighting). In the images, they're (KSAT) denoted by the golf ball looking shelters that house the dishes used to download the data from any of the (near) polar orbiting satellites like the Solar Dynamics Observatory, an imaging craft that I have a lot of experience dealing with so it was a must that I got to see it at some point. Up here, you can just about see the sunset which, as Noel quite rightly said, is the only real light that we get here at the moment. Each day the light gets a little more and we can see a little further into the fjord each time. The cloud cover recent;y has significantly hindered this but we have time and we enjoyed ourselves which was the main thing.

Damn was it tiring though, the hike lasted about 8 hours in total and we covered about 22km. Ordinarily this wouldn't be such a great feat but the snow made it particularly difficult to travel. It was an annoying level of deep and kept collapsing under our weight so most of our energy went into staying up right. The use of the newly coined "butt shovels" at the end made everything that we had just experienced more than worth it. Dropping about 450m using nothing more than a plastic bin lid (may as well have been) was so fun, nearly killed myself mind you but thankfully I had a Kieran in the way to catch me.

And finally there's the picture of the Reindeer that took a particular interest in me, likely because I was getting a little too close for comfort but for a few minutes we just sat there and stared at each other, each acknowledging that neither of us meant any harm. It was really really nice, serene perhaps.

So that's it from me at the moment, I'm sure if there's anything else interesting to happen this week, I'll let you know but right now we're all prepping for the first set of field work that starts next week at the Kjell Henrickson Observatory (KHO), now that will be an adventure.

Time for a cuppah I think.

The Crew

Tip of the day: Jeans are underrated.

It's bounded about a lot here amongst the group but it's really difficult to imagine that it's only been 3 full weeks since we arrived and met the people that we now can't imagine not seeing when we rock up to UNIS for a day of lectures.

Kieran has described a few of the ones that we've adopted and done a rather good job, but just to fill in around the obvious, we have:


Noel
Age: 21
Major: Geology and Physical Geography at Bates College

This guy is your typical redneck hillbilly, prone to outbursts of "YES SIR-IE" and as you can see from the accompanying picture, sports a rather fabulous goatie which only adds to his already incredible demeanor. Also the orange staff he is holding contains a rifle so naturally he's an American but by this point that's already a given. Joking aside, he's a great addition to the group and was likely the first person that both Lucy and myself met as he was originally in the room opposite Lucy in Barrack 3, from that point onwards and as has been with the majority of our friends, we've bonded over the pure fact that we're different to each other culturally and the sort of funnies that can arise from this are never ending it seems... He's a hiker and a general outdoors-ie orientated person, so much so that we were privy to pictures of his butt-cheeks from a nude photo shoot he did with his climbing group back in Maine, naturally I couldn't sit straight and a fun, additional for-no-extra-charge fact, his beard trimmer is completely out of this world. If I was to sum Noel up in a short phrase: "Honorable, hilarious, and genuinely interesting"

Heather

Age: 21

Major: Physics at Bowdoin College

The second American of the group bringing our total to 1 and a half Americans. Viscous doesn't quite describer her adequately as both me and Kieran found out in the first week; it seems she's somewhat adversely affected by short people jokes. Ooops. A few dozen bruises later she seems to have calmed down a bit. Nonetheless I had the (ehhh) luxury of being in a group with Heather in the safety training week so take full responsibility for having introduced her to the rest of the Aber group. I know. I'm sorry guys. Similarly outdoors-ie as with Noel, funnily enough they go to college maybe 30 minutes away from one another back in Maine and had never bumped into each other, anyway they're now inseparable and natter on about climbing and hiking all day long; it's somewhat surreal hearing all these phrases from American films being used and realising it's actually how these weirdos speak. I'm likely going to regret these comments but only time will tell. If I was to sum Heather up the same way: "A small (had to), goofy yet grounded, inspiration."

Peita

Age: 31
Major: Marine Biology

Our resident Australian (Someone has to be, right?), still seems taken back each and every time banter is thrown her way, though she's slowly getting on form and figuring out some decent retorts. She's the groups mother and we make it ever evident whenever we can, usually but shouting "MOTHER" in a high pitched voice coined by Bryan (Ryan) and gleefully prancing in her general direction, inventive right? That aside, she's a very early riser and puts us all to shame, we can barely get out of bed for 8am and by that time she's climbed to the north pole and back. Sort of... Either that or she's cooked up a storm in the kitchen and the smell has been enough to raise us from the dead, I don't know how she does it but she manages to make the simplest collection of foods smell and taste so damn good! If I was to sum Peita up: "Easy-going, caring, and wholly driven"

To sum us all up though, this one is more than apt:

There's so much more to these people than I've detailed here, unsurprisingly. The most important part is that they're each awesome in their own right and I'm 90% sure none of us could imagine what life would be like here without each other. #Soppy

Anywho, currently working on another post that'll be up shortly that documents, mostly, the recent snaps that have been taken and also a little about the first real excursion we did as a group!

Stay tuned!

Time for a cuppah I think.