“2041 is led by Robert Swan, the first person in history to walk both the North and South Poles,” says Luck. “2041 refers to the year that the Antarctic treaty, which says that no one country has dominance over Antarctica or its resources, comes up for renewal. The trips, which usually last about two weeks, consist of educators, students, and scientists. On one of the trips, we spent a month helping to construct the first building down there that ran entirely on renewable energy.”

Preparing for this type of adventure isn’t like setting up for a simple photo junket in the United States. “First of all, the trip itself is long,” says Luck. “I have to fly from Washington, DC, to Buenos Aires, Argentina; from there, I take another plane to a town called Ushuaia, the southernmost city on the planet. Then I have to take a ship for three days—it’s a total of five days of travel just to get there.”

The weather is always a crapshoot when you travel to Antarctica, according to Luck. “In the 10 times I’ve been there, the weather has been spectacular twice,” he says. “The other times, there was constant snow, sleet, and wind, which can go up to 140 mph—it will tear the camera right out of your hand. The seasons are reversed, so right now the Antarctic winter is starting; my ship was the last ship right before the water started icing up. It will be November or so before the ships are able to go back there.”

Due to these extreme conditions, it’s important to pack the right gear—you’ll be surrounded by penguin colonies, not photo retailers, in Antarctica. “I have all my camera gear in one bag, which includes two Nikon cameras; my main Tamron do-it-all lens, the 18-270; a fisheye lens; and a fast f/2.8 lens tele zoom,” Luck says. “The 18-270, however, stays on my camera 90 percent of the time. It’s difficult to shoot in that weather, so you don’t want to be switching lenses a lot. In addition to the snow, there’s a lot of dust down there, and a lot of salt spray. If you get spray on a sensor or mirror, you can’t just go to your nearest friendly camera shop and get it cleaned.”

The 18-270 also comes in handy because of its versatile focal-length range. “If you’re bouncing around in a Zodiac boat, it’s hard to switch lenses in the middle of pursuing an orca,” Luck explains. “So many times I was able to get a shot no one else could because I had the camera and lens ready. One time two orcas were chasing a penguin, and they were all charging our Zodiac; the penguin ended up diving underneath our boat. Everyone else had these really expensive 300mm f/2.8 lenses, but the action was too close; they couldn’t switch lenses in time; with the 18-270, I just went to the 18mm end and was able to capture everything that was happening there."

The 18-270’s Vibration Compensation abilities help Luck in situations where he’s not able to set up a tripod. “Most of the time I’m not in a position to use the tripod,” he says. “The VC definitely helps. Where I see it the most is in the eyes of the animals I’m photographing. I always focus on the eyes, and if they’re not in focus, the image isn’t salvageable. With the 18-270, I get a higher percentage of sharp pictures. You can see this in one shot I took of a penguin—the catch light in the penguin’s eye was sharp as a tack. I can’t imagine not having an image-stabilized lens like this.”

Extra batteries are also key to a successful photo shoot in the harsh Antarctic environment. “I bring three spare batteries, and I’m always recharging them,” says Luck. “If you have a camera with image stabilization, or if you’re constantly looking at the monitor, it takes a lot of power to do that. It would be an unpleasant surprise if you come across that once-in-a-lifetime shot and your battery’s dead.”

To protect his gear, Luck puts a UV filter or skylight filter on his lens immediately. “I keep a few spare filters, because if I drop my camera, I’d much rather have the filter break than the lens,” he says.

To keep his camera and lenses shielded from the brutal elements, Luck uses everything from garbage bags and Ziploc bags to specialty Kata protective devices. “The bags tend to give me the best access,” he says. “I’ve never used one of those waterproof housings they make, because I do change lenses on occasion, and it’s hard to change lenses with the housings. These items keep the bulk of the salt spray off of my gear—if that gets on a multicoated lens, it takes forever to clean.”

Luck uses microfiber cloths to wipe down the camera and lenses while he’s shooting. “I carry about four or five of them,” he says. “When I get back to the ship at night, I wash every cloth—they dry in about an hour.”

Dealing with condensation on your gear can be tricky as well. “If you’re somewhere where it’s 10 below zero, and then you clamor aboard a ship that’s 78 degrees within a matter of minutes, you’re going to get condensation developing,” Luck says. “A trick that’s worked for me is to wrap my camera up in a fleece jacket and put it on my bunk so it can slowly warm up. This keeps condensation from forming on the camera. An addendum to that: Don’t forget your camera is there and pick up that fleece jacket from your bunk—I speak from experience!”

Make sure you’ve read your camera manual, know your gear, and have had adequate practice using it before you embark on your Antarctic adventure. “I had given a talk to everyone on the ship about practicing and reading the manual,” Luck recalls. “Then one day, a rogue-looking wave came at our ship. I whipped out my camera and got an incredible image of it splashing against the side of the ship. I asked if anyone else had gotten it. Everyone was just staring down at their cameras. There’s no reason you can’t practice at home by shooting the kids in the backyard or animals at the park. Or for a shot like the one I got of penguins leaping out of the water, you could practice by going to a soccer game and getting the feel of taking an action shot. Everyone else just got the bubbles on the surface or flat water, because they didn’t quite grasp the penguins were five feet ahead; I was able to anticipate them bursting out of the water.”

There’s no “typical” day shooting in the Antarctic, because anything can happen. “You might get up at 5am because the captain will alert you there’s an iceberg floating right off the side of the ship,” says Luck. “Our ship had a pretty shallow draft, so we could get close to land. We’d explore the historic sites, like the whaling stations—we’d get into the Zodiacs and go to shore using a ‘wet’ landing, where you actually get out of the boats and pivot into the water before scrambling to land. Once we were there, we’d spend the bulk of the day either doing research or photographing people picking up snow samples or mapping.”

Sometimes they’d be alerted to a penguin colony or other wildlife in their path. “All the ships that take people to the Antarctic have signed a treaty that agrees to certain behavior in regard to the animals—you’re not supposed to get within 15 feet of them,” says Luck. “If you get too close to certain animals, it puts them into a defensive posture that can burn too many calories. This can make or break whether they survive the winter.”

The animals, however, haven’t signed the treaty, Luck laughs. “I’ve been photographing and suddenly felt something tapping my back—it was a penguin,” he says. “They have no natural enemies on two feet, so there’s no genetic, engrained fear of humans—they simply see us as tall penguins! We’d spend several hours watching and chronicling their behavior.”

But while the penguins may be safe, other indigenous species should be kept at a safe distance. “The leopard seal, which can weigh up to 1,200 pounds, eats penguins like they’re a buffet, and they attack Zodiacs,” says Luck. “Fur seals are very aggressive and territorial, and their teeth are so bacteria-laden that you’re almost guaranteed to get an infection if you’re bitten. You don’t want to get bitten by one of those, since that would involve a $100,000 flight from the nearest military base back to land.”

There are other hazards, too. “Besides the dangerous animals, there are slippery crevasses you have to be wary of,” Luck says. “Plus, the water is 29 degrees—you’d be unconscious within 15 minutes and dead within 40 if you fell in and no one could get to you. We don’t want anyone getting hurt, so we make sure enthusiasm doesn’t compromise safety.”

The lighting is wildly unpredictable in Antarctica, says Luck. “This is one of the few circumstances when I have to check every single picture on the monitor because I don’t have any idea if I’m even remotely close to getting it right,” he says. “The intense light and the snow constantly throw off the meter. I’m always going one stop under or over to properly expose for this. The cameras I’ve used do have the ability to bracket, but not enough for what I’d like—I wish I could get two stops. You just don’t have the luxury of time there—this isn’t a National Geographic shoot where you’re there for three months.”

The real photographic conundrum comes into play when Luck is trying to photograph something like a black-and-white penguin on white snow. “It’s almost impossible to get the absolute correct exposure,” he says. “I’ll use just a small amount of fill flash to differentiate the penguin from the background. Of course, use too much fill flash and it’s going to look like you took the picture at a zoo, so you have to be really circumspect and not use too much.”

Don’t do a double-take when you see blue streaks on the ice through your viewfinder. “When ice gets compressed over hundreds or thousands of years, it tends to become denser and reflect only blue light,” Luck explains. “Before I saw it for myself, I always thought people were amping up that color in pictures I saw, that the blue wasn’t that blue, but it really is.”

It’s hard not to take clichéd landscape shots, says Luck, but you can avoid this by reverting back to tried-and-true photographic axioms. “People tend to take very basic pictures where they separate the water and the mountains and try to cut it exactly in half on the horizontal axis, which always makes for a boring picture,” he says. “Use the rule of thirds like you’ve been taught: Don’t put the object of focus in the middle of the lens.”

Adding other elements into the image to complement the natural landscape will also enhance your pictorial. “The scale of Antarctica is so epic, that unless you have something else in the picture for scale, you won’t sense how big it really is,” says Luck. “If I’m shooting an iceberg, I’ll try to put a Zodiac in the foreground; if it’s a landscape, I’ll try to put a human or an old shipwreck or building into the image.”

Detail shots are also important to complement the sweeping frozen vistas you’re shooting. “Penguins, for example, leave amazing patterns on the ground when they walk,” Lucks says. “Look at your own feet and see what you can photograph. Also, while you’ll probably want pictures of people smiling, once you get those tourist shots out of your system, take shots of people actually doing something, like collecting samples.”

Make sure to take plenty of photos, Luck advises. “I had a shot of penguins splashing around in the water,” he says. “They were immature penguins who were mock-fighting and establishing their territory. However, I had to take about 40 shots to get that one shot I liked. With digital, you have no excuse not to experiment and take a ton of pictures.”

Even when you’re back on the ship in between land expeditions, don’t ignore the day-to-day happenings taking place around you—after all, this is a trip that most people don’t get to embark on during their lifetimes, so every little detail will be interesting to outsiders looking in. “Sometimes when I’m telling a story about an expedition to someone who hasn’t been there, especially children, they’ll ask questions like, ‘How do you get off the ship?’ (they lower a gangway, if you’re wondering) or ‘How do penguins go to the bathroom?’ Those are the little things you want to take pictures of.

“Many people on these trips use those seasick patches, for example, which basically anesthetize you and turn you into zombies,” he continues. “So there were all these sleeping people all over the ship—I have a couple of shots where it looks like the ship of the dead, but it reminds me of that particular place and time and what was going on.”

At night, don’t just retreat into your cabin with a good book. “There are so many evening opportunities as well,” Luck says. “You can photograph the lights of the ship, for example. Or maybe you can catch the bow of the ship as it’s breaking into the ice. Many captains are agreeable about letting you take pictures from the bridge, so take advantage of that. There can be many dramatic, interactive shots to give you a sense of the place you were in.”

But even with all of these photographic tips in mind, Luck saves perhaps the most unexpected one for last. “If you’re hiking on the continent or in a Zodiac boat, at some point, just put down the camera,” he says. “Look around, take it all in; absorb the incredible beauty of the Antarctic. There’s not a camera made that can duplicate what your memory will retain for you on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.”