Perreault Magazine - 21 -
EXTREME ICE SURVEY (EIS)
Founded in 2007 by James Balog, theExtreme Ice Survey (EIS)
is an innovative, long-term photography project that merges art and
science to give a “visual voice” to the planet’s changing ecosystems.
EIS imagery preserves a visual legacy, providing a unique baseline—useful in years, decades and even centuries to come—for revealing how climate change and other human activity impacts the planet.
One aspect of EIS is a portfolio of single- frame photographs celebrating the beauty—the art and architecture—of ice.
The other aspect of EIS is time-lapse photography:
Currently, 38 cameras are deployed at 20 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, France, Switzerland, Canada, Nepal, Antarctica and the U.S. These
cameras record changes in the glaciers every half hour of daylight year round, yielding approximately 8,500 frames per camera per year.
"We edit the time-lapse images into stunning videos that reveal how fast climate change is transforming large regions of the planet. Finally, EIS supplements the time-lapse record with episodic repeat photography in the French and Swiss Alps, Canada, Iceland and Bolivia."
James Balog and the EIS team are featured in the 2012 internationally acclaimed, award-winning documentary, Chasing Ice, and in the 2009 PBS/NOVA special Extreme Ice.
The Extreme Ice Survey is a project of Earth Vision Trust, based in Boulder, Colorado.
Continued on page 20