Travel & Culture Gallery - Honorable Mention

I must reckon I have always felt a quite strong attraction to glaciers. Every time I get close to a glacier, I cannot avoid feeling humble, overwhelmed and lured by these rivers of ice, so powerful and mysterious, but at the same time so fragile and weak. They are so strong that they can shape a whole landscape, carry with them millions of tons of rocks and even affect the climate. However, a slight change in the overall temperature reveal the truth, and the truth is they are just frozen water. It’s as simple as that.

A year ago I visited the glacier of Zinal, in Valais, Switzerland, and discovered an ice cave at its mouth. Being in winter, when the river which is born from the melting ice becomes just a shy water trickle, I could enter for a few meters inside the guts of the giant. Quite surreal forms decorated the ceiling and walls of the ice, and frost and bubbles created nice patterns in the cold substance. It was a great playground for light, which filtered through the ice and reflected from outside led to a myriad of colors and tones. A visual feast for the photographer indeed.

This scene made me wonder about a number of things. It made me think about how we humans look for order wherever we go. Our brains are made to make sense of the world around us and we are always happy finding order out of the natural chaos. That pile of rocks was to me the perfect example of our avid search for structure - we see chaos around us, but we look for rocks which set together, create a uniform shape where proportion and scale give us the sense of “beauty”. However, order is not only visible in human “products”, but it also exists in nature. One of the major roles of the nature photographer is, in fact, looking for that order so that it helps convey a message. On this image I saw a natural sculpture, blending together with a human one. One might think that the glacier adapts itself with its forms to that little human addition, and the same kind of order can be found in both elements. In a way, this scene struck me as the visual metaphor of a possible balance between the two sides, the humans and the fragility of Nature embodied by these ice monsters - the possibility of living together with respect and sustainability. After all, we are part of Nature, and protecting Nature is protecting ourselves, don’t you think?

Equipment Used: Nikon D3x, Nikon 24-70, no filters, tripod, f/10, 1/6 seconds, ISO 100.

About the Photographer: Rafael Rojas is a fine art photographer specialized on large format landscape and nature photography. After a career as an engineer and researcher he made a dramatic change by becoming a professional photographer of nature and landscape. Today, he travels the planet always in search of those fleeting moments when light and land combine to create sheer magic and inspire the soul.

His work has been awarded in the most prestigious international nature photography competitions, like the International Photography Awards (USA), Nature’s Best (USA), International Conservation Awards (USA), European Nature Photographer of the Year GDT (Germany), MML International (Spain) , Trierenberg Super Circuit (Austria), Panoramic Photographer of the Year Awards (Australia), finalist in BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year (UK) etc.

His images, which are part of numerous private collections from individuals and corporations, are often exposed at international level, in private galleries and museums.

Rafael Rojas carries out photographic workshops in Switzerland and photographic trips to some of the wildest places of the planet.

He works with a panoramic 617 medium format camera and a whole Nikon system (D3x + pro lenses), always set on the sturdiest tripod available.

His work can be see on his website www.rafaelrojasphoto.com.