Chasing Ice Documentary Report

Chasing ice is a documentary done on the research and efforts made by American environmental photographer, James Balog and Extreme Ice Survey to advertise the effects of climate change. It was released in the US on November 16, 2012. The devoted mountaineer hold degrees in Geography and Geomorphology and has a keen interest in science but has no interest in being a scientist. Therefore, he uses the art of photography combined with science to tell the story of Earth’s changes and the relationship between humans and nature. Despite his scientific background, James had a thirst for knowledge; he always wanted to know and find proof of what was out there in the world. Balog was skeptical about climate effects, his curiosity peaked from his trip to the Artic.

The explorer took a trip to the Artic where he had his first real encounter with a landscape of purely ice. His lust for capturing beauty on camera grew on that trip, he described the ice sculptures as “...insanely ridiculously beautiful... ” From this trip, he came to the realization that planet changes had something to do with ice. He thought of a way to open the human perspective on melting glaciers, how to bring across undeniable proof that the breaking away of ice had a lot to do with the effects of climate on Earth. With this thought he went to National Geographic and proposed a profile on glaciers in Iceland. It was a good idea but looking at a wider scale of glaciers across Iceland would be a bigger story, thought the Editor of National Geographic, Dennis Demick. With that in mind, James heads back to Iceland to begin taking photos.

It was on the Solheim Glacier in Iceland that James Balog started to see a bigger picture of what was happening to ice as years go by. He noticed that this specific glacier had depleted by several hundred feet over the years. He made mention that normally glaciers will advance a little in the winter and deplete a little in the summer but recently huge amounts of changes...