Amongst the Emperors: Penguin Photography in Antarctica

Text and Images: Kaisa Sirén

I pace the beach in Punta Arenas, Chile, watching imperial cormorants glide effortlessly along the shoreline. It is November 2025, and the journey I have dreamed about for years is supposed to begin today. Instead, the flight to Union Glacier, Antarctica, is cancelled due to bad weather.

We have a one-week window. If the weather does not cooperate, I will not reach the emperor colony.

That realization settles heavily in my chest. I try to photograph the cormorants, but my mind refuses to focus.

Late that evening, the message finally arrives, we fly tomorrow.

On Tuesday, November 19th, we board a nearly empty 747. Just 38 passengers where on that two-hundred-seat aircraft. Every seat is a window seat. Thirty minutes before landing, the captain cools the cabin, and we pull on our polar gear. The temperature drops: anticipation rises. When the wheels touch down after four hours in the air, we land on a blue-ice runway cleaned into a glacier 1,400 meters thick.

Union Glacier has the feels of a frontier outpost. Two-person sleeping tents, large, heated tents for dining and lectures, mountaineers and polar staff moving with efficiency. After dinner comes more good news: conditions look favorable for flying to the emperor colony in the morning.

The Basler — a vintage DC-3 from 1942 — is loud, cramped, and unapologetically raw. We fly north for more than three hours across the vast white emptiness of the Ronne Ice Shelf toward Gould Bay at the Weddell Sea. Below us stretches an infinite world of ice. As we approach, the flat landscape fractured into crevasses and sculpted ridges. Icebergs lie frozen in place. A strip of open water appears on the horizon.

Then we see it: the colony.

Our camp sits near the edge of the Ronne Ice Shelf, home for the next five nights. Thirteen guests, eleven staff, unheated single tents, and sleeping bags thick enough to silence the cold. At -15°C, comfort is relative but deeply appreciated.

The emperors greet us immediately. They stand around the camp as if mildly curious about our arrival. Open your tent door, and an emperor may be looking back at you.

The rookery lies 1.5 kilometers away across flat sea ice. A relatively easy walk, though nothing about the moment feels ordinary. We are eager, almost breathless, to meet them properly.

And then we are there.

Three thousand pairs of emperor penguins on two-meter-thick sea ice in the middle of the Weddell Sea. The scale is overwhelming. For a while, photography feels secondary. I simply stand and absorb it: the loud whistles of chicks, the rhythmic shuffle of adults, the sudden bursts of tobogganing across the ice.

The chicks are three months old now. Both parents can leave to forage, while small crèches of young birds remain behind under the watch of “babysitters.” Open water lies five kilometers away, earlier in the season it was more than fifty. The males have walked those distances repeatedly through the Antarctic summer, a staggering commitment to survival.

This is the only place in Antarctica where visitors can stay overnight at an emperor colony. Only three groups are permitted this year. I am one of just thirty people granted this privilege.

We spend five full days with the emperors, visiting the colony three times daily. Photographing them is, surprisingly, uncomplicated. They are calm, unafraid, often approaching us with open curiosity. The real challenge is maintaining the mandatory five-meter distance. Because of avian flu precautions, we are not allowed to kneel or lie down. A small but significant limitation for photographers.

The weather remains almost too kind: no harsh winds, no brutal cold, the sun circling the sky twenty-four hours a day. On the third day, the wind finally arrived. Instantly, -15°C feels like -25°C. Faces disappear behind balaclavas and neck warmers, goggles seal tightly, mittens double up, heat pads slide into boots. In Antarctica, preparation is survival.

My own photographic approach leans toward the creative rather than the documentary. Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) defines my visual language. Bright white penguins against a pure white background under relentless sunshine create enormous technical challenges. Neutral density filters are indispensable. Exposure becomes a delicate dance.

I do take traditional images as these resilient creatures deserve to be documented faithfully. But my heart lies with the more interpretive frames. Out of thousands of attempts, perhaps twenty ICM images truly succeeded. They are different, abstract, expressive, distinct from the more conventional photographs created by the other twelve photographers in our group.

For years, since 2021, this expedition lived only in my imagination. Standing among three thousand emperor pairs on the frozen Weddell Sea, it becomes something far greater than a dream.

It becomes reality.

And I leave Antarctica with endless gratitude. For the weather window that opened, for the privilege of proximity, and for the extraordinary lives unfolding quietly on the ice.