The Story Behind the Photograph
Although emperor penguins only have one chick of their own, they often will take care of a group of chicks while on the ice. Here, two adults watch over three chicks at the edge of a large colony — a scene repeated everywhere you look once you know to look for it: gray woolly youngsters gathered into informal nurseries while most parents are away at sea, fishing for the whole family.
Reaching an emperor colony is an expedition in itself — the far ice, reached by ship and then by foot, in cold that gets into the camera batteries before it gets into you. But the birds themselves make it easy. Emperors have no land predators and therefore no fear of a kneeling photographer; stay still long enough and the chicks' curiosity points them at you like compass needles. These five arranged themselves. I only knelt in the right place.
About Emperor Penguins
Emperors are the largest of all penguins and the only animal that breeds on sea ice through the full Antarctic winter — males incubating a single egg on their feet through months of darkness and hundred-mile-per-hour winds while losing nearly half their body weight. The crèche behavior in this photograph is the payoff of that system: chicks pooled together for warmth and safety while both parents forage. The species' total dependence on stable sea ice makes it a bellwether; the British Antarctic Survey even counts colonies from space by the stain of guano on white ice, and several colonies have already been lost to early ice breakup.
No photograph fully conveys the sound of a colony — tens of thousands of trumpeting adults and whistling chicks — but the huddled geometry of a family group comes closest to conveying the warmth.
Photographer's Notes
Made at chick height — kneeling, then lying on the ice — with a short telephoto, because the colony edge allows respectful proximity that long glass would waste. Exposure pushed up hard for the white-on-white scene. This was the gallery's signature Antarctic print, matted in black, and it appears on this site's gallery page exactly where it always hung in the booth: at eye level, where the chicks could meet yours. Its companions are Last One In and the Antarctic Picture Frame.