Herbert G. Ponting
Directing
Biography
Herbert George Ponting, FRGS (21 March 1870 – 7 February 1935) was an English professional photographer. He is best known as the expedition photographer and cinematographer for Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to the Ross Sea and South Pole (1910–1913). In this role, he captured some of the most enduring images of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Known For
Herbert Ponting travelled to Antarctica with Captain Scott’s ill-fated South Pole expedition and filmed the stunning images that make up this extraordinary documentary. (Originally released in 1912 as With Captain Scott in the Antarctic, the material was re-edited and re-issued by Ponting in 1924 as The Great White Silence.)
The Great White Silence
This is a documentary of Captain R.F. Scott's second Antarctic expedition, begun in 1910. The British, under Scott, attempted to reach the South Pole before Roald Amundsen's Norwegians. Scott's writings reveal that the British made it to the South Pole, only to find that the Norwegians had gotten there first. Scott, and the other four men who had made it to the Pole with him, died on the return trip.
90° South
Documentary released by Gaumont in 1912.
Captain Scott's South Pole Expedition
Filmed by Herbert G. Ponting during Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913), this 1912 documentary presented British audiences with the first moving pictures of Antarctica. Sponsored and distributed by Gaumont, the multi-reel program showed the Terra Nova ship, the Cape Evans base camp, daily routines of the expedition team, Antarctic wildlife, and striking scenes of the ice landscape. Released in London in 1912—before news of Scott’s death reached Britain—it became enormously popular, combining scientific record with patriotic spectacle.