Experience Ilulissat, Greenland from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo.
Experience Ilulissat. This video has been a mega passion project for me.
The vastness and magnitude of the Ilulissat landscape is mind blowing. In particular the incredibly clear air combined with a lack of trees and identifiable objects make it impossible to get a sense of scale. Something miles away can seem close by.
A real highlight of the filming was seeing Greenland at it’s extremes. In August 2019 I experienced the summer warmth with icebergs, whales off in the distance and fresh blueberries underfoot (it felt a bit like being on the set of a nature documentary). Contrasted with the extreme winter cold in February 2020. During filming temperatures reached a high (not low) of -25°C / -13°F and dropped as low as -45°C / -49°F.)
A tribute to modern cameras is that they were able to function in such conditions. My Ronan gimbal struggled and kept switching off without warning. Rather amusingly LCD screens become slow in extreme cold. Reminiscent of watching TV when drunk.
To capture the final scene of the video, looking out at frozen Ilulissat as 24 hours pass, involved three cameras shooting continuously for three days in temperatures of around -25°C.
The northern lights shot was made possible by Nikon Z6’s low light performance enabling me to shoot at 2FPS getting the benefits of RAW image quality with near realtime filming speeds.
Huge thanks to Air Greenland for making this amazing project possible.
Kit List Nikon D5 Nikon Z6 Nikon Z7 Nikon D500 x2 Ronin SC Gimbal