There is no place quite like Patagonia. Of this, I am convinced. Patagonia is the epitome of everything that is right and pure and wild and magical in nature. The camera was invented for places like this. It was invented to capture loving moments between two of thousands of penguins living on deserted islands in the Strait of Magellan, to immortalize the magnificent glaciers that are all too rapidly melting, to freeze in time the moments that made us feel more alive than we've ever felt whether that came while summiting a snow-covered peak or biking to the ends of the earth.
Perrito Moreno Glacier. Post-trekking celebrations. February 2015. Photo copyright Silvie Snow-Thomas.
In Patagonia, you can pretend you're an explorer. You find new things with every step and you can imagine so much more. And if you’re as insanely lucky as I am, Patagonia becomes the muse that helps you feed your outdoor photography addiction. John Muir would have loved this place.
Being outdoors and in nature, accompanied by little else than my best friends and my best camera, is where I want to be, so much more than I often am. Patagonia reminded me of that, hitting me over the head again and again with each new vista, each sunrise, each double-rainbow shooting out of a golden mountainside illuminated in yellow and orange and pink. Photos upon photos upon photos must be snapped. These moments must be memorialized. And can there be a better way?
Torres del Paine National Park. Patagonia. February 2015. Photo copyright Silvie Snow-Thomas.
“Nature, especially in a place like Patagonia, over-promises, and then exceeds expectations. When we protect it and explore it consciously and delicately, it gives us back one hundred times more than we’ve ever given it”
- and gives us one thousand more photos than we’d ever thought we’d take, each photograph offering ever so slight variations of the one snapped just before it.
Nature humbles us and then lifts us back up again, filling our spirits and our hearts with powerful forces originating from swirling winds or rushing water or brilliant sunshine; powerful forces that ever so slightly, or in my case ever so greatly, enhance our lives and our beings.
Biking to the end of the earth. Patagonia, Chile. February 2015. Photo copyright Silvie Snow-Thomas.
It's just as John Muir said, "The mountains are calling, and I must go."
And, when I get there (and I do hope you’ll come with me), I simply must take a photograph.
-Silvie Snow-Thomas, May 2015
More about Silvie: Bostonian in Brooklyn by way of Peace Corps Panama. Avid storyteller. Serial wanderluster. Director of the social good communications division MFAction at Mfa, Ltd. Marketing & PR. Always in search of: good whiskey, great people, beach vibes, the right composition, and figuring out how we can collectively change the world. Photographer and writer of http://silandhercamera.tumblr.com/, and http://somethoughtshere.tumblr.com/.