Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Landscape Photography Locations => Topic started by: 32BT on January 28, 2013, 04:57:19 am

Title: Auyuittuq National Park
Post by: 32BT on January 28, 2013, 04:57:19 am
An homage to Billy Connolly,

There used to be a tv show appropriately called Taxi. The concept was simple. Mount a couple of hidden cams in an ordinary taxi cab and tape all the conversations and life stories that people are willing to share during the drive (and obviously gave permission to air). The original show was a success imo primarily because the initial drivers chosen, had a genuine interest in the people and their stories. That works, because then it is really like you are part of a true conversation of a relevant event in the lives of these persons. A truly interested person will automatically ask the right questions.

The show quickly went downhill after a few seasons because somewhere over in television land they apparently have decided that "human-interest" means "tear-pulling" and so instead of genuine interest, the driver started to ask the type of questions that would guarantee a reliving of sad events. It looked more like a subtle show of torment than it was inspirational. Compare if you will: "How did you overcome such mishap and sadness?" vs. "How did that make you feel when your sister died?" (Yeah, jumping in the air and starting a party, what do you think f*ckhead?)

Fortunately, every now and then a person comes along with enough life-experience to naturally understand the difference and with a genuine interest in the human nature to elicit great television. Even if it requires a little more effort on the side of the viewer. And Billy Connolly is one of those people.

I just finished watching his show where he travels the North-west passage. At first I didn't much care for it. What are people looking for in those cold regions, I don't know. Add to it the fact that the temperatures where plummeting subzero here, I wasn't really prepared to give it my attention.

Global warming to the rescue. It turns out I wasn't prepared indeed for what was about to be shown. Next to the fact that Billy Connolly seems to have an odd sort of natural rapport with people, he also visited landscapes that I find highly surprising to have never seen in my 40+ years of television.

And it is those landscapes that made me write this here. I thought I had seen it all since television has travelled to just about every corner of the entire world, but global climate changes have unearthed (or better uniced) some natural wonders that are purely indescribable. Billy Connolly visited Auyuittuq National Park which no doubt used to be hidden below glaciers and snow, but now that landscape looked absolutely breathtaking, even on a simple television screen.

It looks so impressive, majestic, vast, and expansive, and so enormously beautiful, if you weren't a photographer before, you would want to be then. In fact, you can just point that camera in any direction with your eyes closed, and you would probably end up with a beautiful picture anyway. It made me wonder why I never had seen this before. It equals or even surpasses the grand canyon, and we all have seen the grand canyon in every possible angle by now.

The only explanation I could come up with is the ice. Well, that, and the inhospitable climate that used to be there. But with the warm personality of Billy Connolly as tour-guide it has been a pleasure to have virtually visited. It will be on the bucket list, nay, the todo list, it deserves a top spot.


The park is around the 23min mark, but the whole thing is absolutely worth a watch:
Billy Connolly, Journey to the Edge of the World, Episode 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu8N2ucQ3Tk)