Photographer Page

Stefan Christmann

Before she leaves to hunt at sea for two months, a female emperor penguin assists her partner in transferring her egg onto his feet. The delicate routine must be quick or the egg might freeze. The flightless birds depend on Antarctica’s frozen sea ice shelves to find mates, breed, and raise chicks. But as temperatures rise, the shelves are vanishing. (From “As ice melts, emperor penguins march toward extinction,” May 2020.)

Emperor penguins in autumn begin their roughly six-mile journey from the ocean to their Atka Bay breeding grounds in Antarctica’s Queen Maud Land. The warming climate is defrosting the sea ice they need to find mates.

Stefan Christmann won top distinction in the ‘portfolio award‘ category, for his work on the Ekström Ice Shelf in Antarctica. He captured this image of more than 5,000 emperor penguins on a freezing cold day during a brief moment of twilight.