A vast king penguin colony spread across the meltwater channels and grassy flats of Salisbury Plain, seen from a tussock slope above, with an expedition ship anchored in the bay beyond under gray cloud.

On this work

South Georgia
I went to South Georgia for the king penguins. I got them, along with elephant seals, fur seals, a lot of noise, and a smell nobody warns you about.

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A small group of king penguins standing together on snow at Right Whale Bay, South Georgia.

Field Edition

Colonization

Salisbury Plain • South Georgia Island

Field Edition. Signed, not numbered.

Our second landing that day, late in the afternoon. The light was streaming onto the mountains behind me, and I did shoot some of that, but the size of the colony is what blew me away. We climbed up through the tussock grass to a ridgeline for a view down on part of it and some sense of scale, and found another colony behind us, higher up. There were birds everywhere.