Photographer Profiles

(Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from an amazing multimedia story in Powder magazine – Shutterbug’s sister publication – by Sierra Davis with images by photographer Reuben Krabbe. The story, titled "Sliver," traces Krabbe’s epic journey to a Norwegian archipelago near the North Pole to capture a rare celestial event: a solar eclipse on the spring equinox.)

Three years ago while looking for his next challenging project, Reuben Krabbe, a 25-year-old Canadian photographer, dreamt up the expedition that had brought a crew of nine—including Cody Townsend, Brody Leven and Chris Rubens, filmmaker Anthony Bonello, and photographer Bjarne Salén—to their frozen campsite, located in one of two places on earth with a perfect view of the total solar eclipse on March 20, 2015.

Months of planning and careful calculations determined the Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole, home to 2,642 residents and equally as many polar bears, provided the ideal vantage point to see the moon completely block out the sun. 

While total solar eclipses happen as often as every 18 months, this eclipse also took place on the spring equinox—the same day the sun returned to view after six months of complete darkness in Svalbard—an occurrence so rare NASA estimates it won’t happen again for another 400,000 to 500,000 years.

“Ultimately, it was controlled chaos, predicting and narrowing down our possibilities. We had to be emotionally prepared to get skunked,” says Krabbe, who pored over metadata of eclipse photos and studied maps and celestial charts in anticipation of the 90-second window he would have to get his shot during the event.

Despite every preparation, every precise calculation, the trip’s success was left to chance in a place where the sky is overcast 60 percent of the time in March. A cloudy sky could block the eclipse and Krabbe would be unable to get the shot he had waited three years to capture.

“To go all the way to Svalbard and try to capture the pictures and videos during an eclipse was all a bit stressful,” says Salén, the second camera­man on the trip. “It’s a risk to go and not even see the eclipse happening, but if you believe in something you should just go for it.”

See more of Krabbe's fantastic photos from the trip below. Read the full story here.