2013, 2014: Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com’s look back – pho­to­gra­phy and the inter­net

2013 has been a very suc­cessful year regar­ding polar pho­to­gra­phy. From all tho­se trips to the Arc­tic and Ant­ar­c­tic, I have brought a wealth of good mate­ri­al back home. Some of it is alre­a­dy published as part of the tri­plog, pho­to gal­lery and slide­show that come with most trips, a few ones are part of the Spits­ber­gen calen­dar 2014, and more will be seen in future books and calen­dars.

The 360 degree navigab­le pan­ora­ma images are rela­tively new ter­ri­to­ry in pho­to tech­ni­que. The coll­ec­tion of polar pan­ora­mas on this web­site is alre­a­dy the lar­gest of its kind on the world wide web, and it has images of places that have never befo­re been pho­to­gra­phed this way! The­re is still unpu­blished mate­ri­al wai­ting to go out, as the pro­ces­sing is quite time con­sum­ing, and the­re is defi­ni­te­ly still far more work to be done in 2014 and bey­ond.

The results can be seen on Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com. Also bey­ond the new pan­ora­ma coll­ec­tion, quite a lot has hap­pen­ed the­re. The Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com news sec­tion has got more than one post per week in 2013, making sto­ries and news from the Arc­tic acces­si­ble in one site in a lan­guage that most peo­p­le can read. In the future, we will increase the fre­quen­cy of pos­ting and include news from other parts of the Arc­tic and the Ant­ar­c­tic. By the way, the Ger­man part of this web­site (Spitzbergen.de) was the first polar news blog within the Ger­man spea­king inter­net.

Many parts of the web­site have been updated regar­ding both con­tents and advan­ced tech­no­lo­gy. As an exam­p­le, the regio­nal descrip­ti­ons of Sval­bard are now get­ting pho­to gal­le­ries to illus­tra­te the indi­vi­du­al parts of the Spits­ber­gen archi­pe­la­go. This is an ongo­ing pro­cess. For exam­p­le, Bear Island (Bjørnøya), Edgeøya and Barent­søya have alre­a­dy got their gal­le­ries, more will fol­low.

Quite important­ly, the Eng­lish sec­tion of this web­site has got its own domain sin­ce ear­ly 2013, which is obvious­ly spitsbergen-svalbard.com. Well, you know this, other­wi­se you wouldn’t be rea­ding this. But plea­se don’t for­get to update any links. And I am gra­teful for links any­way! All rele­vant con­tents – and pret­ty much ever­y­thing is rele­vant in one or the other way – is published in both Eng­lish and Ger­man.

And final­ly, Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com has got its own Face­book site sin­ce sum­mer 2013, whe­re all posts are made in both Eng­lish and Ger­man. While I am tra­ve­ling, the­re are regu­lar sto­ries and pho­tos from the field. The­se are of cour­se also acces­si­ble wit­hout being on Face­book, you don’t need to log on to read the stuff pos­ted the­re.

Do you agree that spitsbergen-svalbard.com is a gre­at re­source for any arc­tic enthu­si­ast?

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