From Wildlife to Ice, Photographer Captures the Awe of Antarctica (PHOTOS)

Photography came as an afterthought for Ira Meyer. In 1986 the photographer was in a bicycle accident that opened his eyes to the world of photography. He sold his small lawn maintenance business and used the funds to travel to Alaska, spending an additional $180 on a small Fuji point-and-shoot camera.

Though he currently resides in Oxnard, Calif., he has spent a lot of his time traveling and capturing the landscape and life of Antarctica.

“Antarctica’s surely the closest thing I’ll ever experience to traveling to another planet,” he told weather.com. While many people are first drawn to the wildlife, the ice is what convinces people to stay and return. “[The ice’s] shapes, forms and colors forever leave me gobsmacked.”

The trip itself is a difficult one. It takes Meyer three flights and 30 hours to travel from his California home to Tierra del Fuego, Chile, from where he boards a ship to head through the Drake Passage in South America, then two more days of sailing to land in the Antarctic.

Meyer has traveled on over 30 trips to the Antarctic, describing it as a “privilege” to have spent so much time there. “I understand that most people will never get the chance to see it firsthand.” His photography gives viewers a chance to experience the region through their eyes. “I hope the images I return home with can open people’s minds to how extraordinary a realm it is, and that its preservation is quintessential.”

The Antarctic’s beauty, however, is changing with time due to climate change. “Over the course of the dozen years I’ve been going there, there surely seems as though there might be more exposed rock on some mountainsides of the Antarctic Peninsula,” he said.