Helicopter in a Glacial Bowl

In Spring 2021, I made a half dozen trips to Colony Glacier in search of a vantage to photograph stunning aquamarine ponds that form on the lower glacier in spring but drain by early summer. I spotted several from the air. But I couldn’t land near the ones I really wanted to photograph. Crossing even short distances with crampons and an ice axe proved too treacherous. On a stormy day in early June, I returned to one of the ponds I had marked on my GPS. Six feet of flowing water in April had drained to mere inches. So I decided to flip the script: Instead of using the helicopter to reach a place where I could shoot down on the pond as my subject, I landed in the pond itself, climbed above, and shot down with the helicopter as my subject.