Rachel Trautmann's Weekly Blog - 03/21/16

James Balog

I watched a documentary last week called Chasing Ice; it is on Netflix. It surrounds the work of James Balog. The film begins after Balog's creation of  Extreme Ice Survey, a ice glacier photography surveying group. Balog believes that if people are able to see how extreme climate change actually is, that maybe they would be willing to do more about it. If you don't have Netflix, or just want to watch a cool video, check out the Time Lapse Video he was working on. Balog also has work surrounding the changing forests.

 As seen in Chasing Ice, he used 25 different cameras for the Extreme Ice Survey project. They were placed on mountains and cliffs to document the changing glaciers. The images that are not from the time lapse cameras were done by James Balog. The image below is an example of some of the images he added to the series that were not done by the time lapse cameras. He uses photo stitching in a lot of his work.

I was drawn to his work because of the documentary, of course. I was surprised how much I actually liked his work though. I thought the idea and concept behind the project was interesting but that didn't mean the work was going to be good! His work also plays well into what I have in mind for my final project. I want to capture moments and small details that most people usually overlook. It could be lighting that makes it interesting (like the image above) or just something unusual (like the image of the bubbles in the ice).