Photographer recreates photo more than 100 years old to warn about melting ice

Climate change is having an extremely negative impact on melting ice. To make these effects more visible, photographer Neill Drake recreated a photo of a glacier taken in the Arctic more than a century ago, highlighting how drastically reduced ice is now and presenting climate change warnings.

The Blomstrand Glacier, located in Svalbard, was taken in 1918 by the Norwegian Polar Institute and showed it to be a tall, seemingly impenetrable wall of ice.

However, 104 years later, Drake has reimagined the devastating decline that scientists believe is the result of global warming.

Drake explained that he felt a sense of responsibility to take this photo when he had the opportunity to visit the place where the old photo was taken. Drake said he wanted to take an image that was as close to the original as possible. He used a Sony a7R III camera and a Voigtlander 40mm f/1.2 lens.

Using the original photo print as a guide, Drake set out to find a location to take a photo as similar as possible. Based on the unique shape of the mountain top in the original image, Drake is exactly where the 1918 photo was taken.

'I probably took about 40-50 photos and then used Photoshop and Lightroom to find the best comparison by layering the two images on top of each other and using low opacity.

Photographer Neill Drake

Drake said he developed a passion for the environment after working as a guide in Antarctica, seeing dozens of glaciers decline or disappear altogether.