Ben Hall is one of Britain's most talented nature photographers.
He recently turned his lens on our natural heritage in Argentina and Chile.
Here are just a few of the results. For more, see www.benhallphotography.com
For guided trips with Ben in Argentina or Chile, drop us a line.
Iguazu Falls in summmer storms.
Condor, Los Cuernos del Paine.
Skua, Mount Olivia, Tierra del Fuego.
Black browed albatross, Beagle Channel.
Great dusky swifts, Devil's Throat, Iguazu.
Rufescent tiger heron wrestling with eel, Esteros del Ibera
Magallenic pengiun in snow storm, Estancia Haberton, Tierra del Fuego.
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Below is a brand new collection of images from 2008. All shot by Dominic. For more info, or to order high res digital copies or prints, just drop me an email. dominic@aventuraargentina.com
Andean Flamingos move from their feeding grounds in the steppe to spend the night on the shore of Lago Argentino.
40,000 year old ice fresh from the Moreno glacier.
Puerto Williams, is the last settlement before Antarctica, on the Chilean island of Navarino. Fishing, especially with these Centolla King Crab pots, bolsters a fragile economy, elsewhere supported by the military and the vague income that comes from being a geographic anomaly, and a contender for the world's remotest settlement.
Some of Patagonia's most prestigious estancias line shore of Lago Roca. Horses run in vast wild herds, unfenced.
Further north in Santa Cruz, small puestos, line the Viedma River. This is tough country for sheep farming, requiring huge acreage per animal, but produces some of the best lamb in the world.
Jeep tracks mark a road through a similar Santa Cruz estancia, under high lenticular clouds. Snowmobiles, jeeps, or even motorcross bikes make life a little easier on a 200,000 hectare ranch. Vegetation is sparse and xerophytic, small bunch grasses and creosotes.
A juvenile Bandurria (Buff-necked Ibis) pesters for food in a field of sorrel. This grass colours much of the damper steppe lands red in spring, but is not autochthonous.
Sailing west through the Beagle Channel takes you through one of the world's most pristine landscapes. This is Isla O'Brien. Other than the occasional passage-by of navy vessels, most islands in the archipelago remain unvisited. Some haven't borne human footprints since Darwin, Magellan, Sarmiento de Gamboa, and other pioneers. Since the opening of the Panama canal, there is little commercial reason to risk these treacherous and innavigable straits.
Blackbrowed Albatross in the Beagle Channel. Despite being circumpolar in the southern oceans, and reaching apparently high densities in the Chilean fjords, this species is IUCN classified as endangered.
Terrestrial wildlife in these remote channel islands, like this female Upland goose, is ecologically naive, never having suffered human predation.
In Torres del Paine, lenga (northofagus pumilio) and coihue de magallanes (nothofagus betuloides) predominate. Winds whip them into twisted bonsai shapes, and myodendrons like the chinese lantern and grey lichens add to the wizened look. These subantarctic beeches have their nearest relatives in New Zealand, a remant of the slow speciaction after the breakup of Gondwanaland land. Despite being at opposite ends of the earth, Patagonia and New Zealand were the last to separate. .
As these nothofagus forests meet the steppe, Patagonian fox are common.
Cau Cau Beach at Caleta Horcón, near Valparaiso, is pounded by Pacific Surf, and vast swathes of kelp brought ashore by the Humboldt current.
Black vulture.
A lone Rhea, dwarfed by Los Cuernos de Paine, the batholithic Horns of Paine. Extruded during a sudden cataclysmic event much more recent that the formation of the Andes, the massif marks the Southern point of the Continental Icefield.The glacially carved batholiths retain their black caps, which at one point formed parts of the earth's mantle.
Lone guanaco on the basaltic steppe. This is the real Patagonia.
The Harrier Project
A small lagoon on the edge of the vast Lago Argentino provides habitat for countless waterfowl, and several pairs of cinerous harriers. During the breeding season, the harriers are very aggressive, possessive of their territories, and ready to fight any intruder who comes too close, be they human or avian. After the first few hours of photographing the birds I had to return to the jeep for a hat, so enboldened was the male that he would dive down, deliberately against the sun so I couldn't see him, and fly off with a chunk of hair.
Below is a selection of the resulting images.
Here, the female cinerous harrier swoops to attack an ibis three times her weight, such is her territorial aggression.
Want a memento of your trip?
Why not choose an image, have it hand printed on Fuji Crystal archival-quality paper, and delivered to your door.
Prints measure15'' x10'', or in the case of portrait crops, 15'' on the longest side.
Thery're £35 each, including delivery.
If there's something specific you're after, drop us an email. There's a good chance we'll have captured it on camera. The images above, by necessity, are low-resolution. Your high-res print will be pin sharp, and balanced for colour density and saturation.