These images use elements drawn from Antarctica but are intended to be seen as universal rather than location specific.

I’ve produced many highly altered images from material shot in Antarctica, but I don’t present them with images from my body of work entitled Antarctica. I also don’t title them Antarctica. Antarctica is the first body of work I’ve produced that uses classic place and date titles. That type of title doesn’t adequately describe a majority of images I make. So, most of my images are titled with a series name, usually describing a process not a thing, and an order of creation number.

Get priority status in my Antarctica 2011 workshop.
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Category: Antarctica, Disclosure


I’m uneasy about this one. I underexposed the image by several stops. A bright sunlit scene became nocturnal in appearance. When discussing this image, many journalists have said the practice of underexposure is accepted. In this case, it distorts the sensation of time. It doesn’t represent the way I saw it, but instead the way I want to see it. I feel like I should censor myself and not include the image. But I included it to stimulate more discussion. Including it required disclosures like this. And more discussion. Do you think this kind of practice is acceptable in editorial contexts?

Find out about my exhibit here.

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Email info@johnpaulcaponigro.com.

Category: Antarctica 2009, Disclosure
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While I’ve limited my practices in my work from Antarctica to those adopted by editorial photographers, I’m interested in pushing the envelope to stimulate useful dialog on contemporary practices. Here’s one. These panoramas were stitched together from multiple shots. I think that practice is fine in the context of journalism, as long as it represents what was before the lens. Yet the second panorama here is different. The exposures for this particular panorama were made over the course of several minutes. There was a lot of parallax so the icebergs had different relative positions in the exposures that were merged. Because of this, you can actually see more icebergs that otherwise would have been hidden. This type of composite actually presents the viewer with more information than a single exposure could. Is this appropriate practice? I think it is, if the author and media outlet disclose their practices. I think the news media ought to disclose much more information than they do: who the author is; how the documents were produced; how they were edited and delivered; who delivered them; what context they were placed in and how that shifts our perception of them; what time and financial constraints influenced the production; who the media derives income from; who the media outlet is owned by. We know the media’s not perfect or unbiased. We need to know who the media is. Way too many assumptions are made. We’ve lost our faith. Reclaim our trust. Give us more disclosure. That’s what I’m doing here.

Find out about my exhibit here.

Stay tuned daily for more resources.

Get priority status in my Antarctica 2011 workshop.
Email info@johnpaulcaponigro.com.

Category: Antarctica 2009, Disclosure
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Several images changed for inclusion in my book Antarctica. Why? The original versions contained small, but significant,  elements that were composited from other sources. So I removed them for this project. Even though it’s often highly interpretive, editorial work is about representing the scene as it was witnessed. It wasn’t clear to me until after the initial voyage what kind of project I was developing. As it became clearer and clearer I realized I needed to put certain restrictions on my standard practices – otherwise it would become a different kind of project. There’s nothing wrong with those practices. They’re just not appropriate for this kind of project.

It’s usually only astronomers who realize that the moon in the first version is impossibly lit; it should have light on the same side as the iceberg and mountains. I like to leave clues like this for the viewer that alerts them to the fact that images have been altered. With my other type of work, I usually don’t tell them. Instead, I let them figure it out. This keeps viewers asking a lot of questions, which is really beneficial for everyone. In the case of my Antarctica work, I’m now doing the reverse. It’s appropriate and relevant to do so. In this case, full disclosure raises more questions. Questions and dialog are useful.

Find out about my exhibit here.

Stay tuned daily for more resources.

Get priority status in my Antarctica 2011 workshop.
Email info@johnpaulcaponigro.com.

Category: Antarctica 2009, Disclosure
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Several images didn’t make it into the second edition of my book Antarctica. Why? This body of work is editorial in nature. I’ve only included images created with the similar limitations. These two images are composites that replace the original background with a Russian research vessel with a more aesthetically pleasing seascape. Even if the author expresses an opinion in it, editorial work is primarily about informing and secondarily about aestheticizing, not the other way around. So these are completely different kinds of images. They need to be placed other contexts.

Find out about my exhibit here.

Stay tuned daily for more resources.

Get priority status in my Antarctica 2011 workshop.
Email info@johnpaulcaponigro.com.

Category: Antarctica 2009, Disclosure
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