Looking at his pictures, it is hard to imagine that Michael Poliza has ever been anything other than a photographer. But first he tried his hand at acting and then later as a businessman in the IT sphere before discovering his innate talent behind a camera.
Enjoy also another gallery of Michael Poliza (The Kenya by Michael Poliza)
He shifted his focus to photography in 1997 and embarked on the round-the-world Starship Millennium Voyage to capture the beauty of wild locations all over the planet. The voyage complete, he began to explore and photograph game reserves in Southern Africa, eventually publishing a book, Africa, in 2006 to massive acclaim. Poliza then decided to take some time away from the African heat to retreat to the cooler climates of the Arctic and Antarctic.
The result was the exquisite coffee-table book Antarctic, in which he highlights the delicate balance of life in the frozen (and not so frozen) polar regions. Threatened by global warming, these chilly landscapes provided him with some stunning and unusual images. From polar bears against a backdrop of vibrant pink fireweed in Hudson Bay, Canada, to a rather close encounter with a barnacled humpback whale at the Antarctic Peninsula, Poliza documents the polar regions as you have never seen them before.
