A new series of photographs from award-winning aerial photographer Tom Hegen explores the abstract beauty in icebergs. Shot off the west coast of Greenland, Hegen's work captures the majesty of these giant white castles.
While much of Hegen's prior work has explored the astonishing interactions between humans and nature, this new series takes him to Greenland investigating the incredible scale of icebergs as they calve off Sermeq Kujalleq, one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world.
This new project from Hegen follows on from an earlier series exploring the effects of global warming and sea level rise on the Greenland Ice Sheet. That series, titled The Two Degrees Series, explicitly looked at melting glaciers from above. His new work however is a little more interested in the aesthetics of icebergs.
"The Iceberg Series highlight shapes, texture and appearance of broken off ice masses from the Arctic Ice Sheet," Hegen explains to New Atlas. "I wanted to show from an aerial perspective the sheer size and fascination of them."
Spanning two different photo sets, the Iceberg Series' took Hegen to a small town in Greenland called Ilulissat. From here he started his flights, so far producing two sets of images, one highlighting the incredible scale of these icebergs from horizontal perspectives, and the other looking down from above at the stunning shapes and patterns they form.
"Greenland is a very remote place which means you really need to plan a lot in advance," Hegen says. "In Greenland, there are no roads connecting the towns, the only ways to come around are by water or air or feet. As for most of my aerial photo projects, I did a lot of research on the locations beforehand. Being prepared is key when it comes to aerial photography. I need to consider location, time of the year, daylight, wind, altitude and so on. But once everything is set, it's an absolute pleasure working in such environments."
Take a look through our gallery at more of Hegen's spectacular Iceberg photographs.
