There is an interesting story behind this photograph. I personally did not
see this picture until more than 15 years after I took it. I saw it for the
first time on September 7th, 2000. This picture was taken on April 23rd, 1985!
During the process of putting together this journal, I thought it would be
more complete if I included the sequence of the
rolls of film I shot along
with the scanned images. This was a painstaking process of associating each
scanned image to the actual negative number. I did not scan every photograph
I took during the 11 day journey, but I did scan every picture I took while
at the North Pole. So, assigning the North Pole negative numbers to their
appropriate scanned images was a simple matter.
But when I got to negative number 14 of
roll 6, I couldn't associate it
to any of the scanned images. At first, I just thought I forgot to scan in
one of my photos. But, to my surprise, the photo did not exist in my Polar
Album! In a sense, this was exciting. I was looking at a negative of a
picture I had not seen in 15 years! I took the negative to the store I
normally have my film developed at and requested a reprint of negative 14.
It should be noted that 15 years ago, the standard size print was 3x5.
Today, the standard size print is 4x6. Also, 15 years ago, I thought I did
a thorough check to verify that each negative had a corresponding print.
At that time, I only found 1 negative that was not printed. I don't know
how I missed this one.
When the reprint of negative number 14 was ready, I beheld the site that you
now see before you. My polar journals and photo album are now (after 15
years) complete.
What you see are the 2 planes sitting on the polar ice pack. I was called
back from my explorations of the pressure ridge and took this photo while
I was walking back to the planes.