Page 21: I travel a lot, with my camera, of course.
Amazon 1986, China 1991, Arctic (Nord Pole) 1984.

The Amazon in 1986

Arctic 1984: leaving from Bettles, Alaska, population 12, close to the North Pole, with the intrepid Barry Moss who now lives in Seffner, Florida.

It was Barry who initiated me, earlier, to glacier-climbing. We left together from Florida and we took planes which became smaller and smaller, and it became colder and colder.
Coming straight from Florida, it took me a week to start feeling well at - 40° (interestingly, this is where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales meet up, -40° C = - 40° F)
At 40 degrees Celsius below zero, photography becomes very difficult: the films become brittle, the batteries stop working, the cold metal rips off your eyebrows, the frost created by your breath obstructs the viewfinder, you have 20 seconds max without gloves to change the film roll by pulling off your external glove (there is another, thinner polyprolene glove underneath).


The local climate of the Bettles area is typical of a continental regime. The sun does not set during the period June 2 to July 9. Winters are typical of interior Alaska. Minimum temperatures average below zero from November through March, and readings in the -45 to -55 degree range are experienced each winter. Here, as in most of the interior, the transition from summer to winter and vice versa is rapid, resulting in short spring and fall.