ZECO TRAVEL TALK

Zegrahm Expeditions is proud to announce that not one but two of our travelers recently received ‘Highly Honored’ awards in the Nature’s Best 2008 Photography Competition. Our congratulations go out to Andy Crosthwaite and John Conrad whose images were chosen from over 20,000 entries.

Both award-winning images were taken on our October 2007 March with the Penguins expedition and, by pure coincidence, Andy and John shared a cabin on that voyage!

Andy’s image was captured on a visit to an emperor penguin rookery on Snow Hill Island, Antarctica. Hiking into the rookery, they witnessed a large number of emperor penguins clustered in groups tending to chicks of all ages. Some of these were approximately half the size of the adults, but many were much smaller, and the tiniest were still on their parent’s feet.

John’s image—an emperor penguin chick under an adult and facing the wrong way—was also captured on Snow Hill Island. While everyone in the group was trying to capture chicks perched on the feet of an adult, John saw this image and jumped for joy. Not surprisingly, John’s Highly Honored image is in the category of “Animal Antics.”

Both images will be published in the Fall 2008 Nature’s Best Photography Magazine and were selected for an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC that will run from November 22, 2008 until May 3, 2009.