When I awaken, we are in the clouds. Bleary-eyed and needing the loo at 6 am, I peek outside the window to see the strange flat light coming through, and find myself looking into a world of nothingness. The bay is cloaked in an ethereal fog, with a hauntingly beautiful warm sun faintly illuminating the outline of an iceberg. I feel a small scratch in my throat and my nose and a little unsteady on my feet. The beginnings of a mild cold. Though I could do with the two hours more sleep before breakfast, the fog is far too captivating and too temporary to justify going back to bed. I quietly reach for my my camera and drone and slip out past my roommate, who is snoring softly.

The second I launch my drone into the air, I know the early start was not a mistake. As I rise through the layers of fog – which stretch upward from sea level to only 100 metres high – I have a perfect view of the entire fjord which, this morning, is shrouded in a dense cloud. Far to the right, I see the tips of icebergs peaking out where the cloud is thinner perhaps and straight ahead, on the other side of the fjord, Greenland’s ice cap is illuminated in shades of yellow, pink and white. From here, there is nothing but a land of barren ice sheet until you reach the west coast on the other side of Greenland.

Over the next two hours before breakfast, I burn through every battery in my bag to capture the fog as it rolls through the landscape. I shoot stills, wides, telephoto, and hyperlapse. I fly three drone batteries and only stop when I run out of power. I am mesmerised. This morning feels ancient. The fog will last but a moment, before it inevitably burns off and the weather will shift into something else, but it makes me emotional because there’s so much beauty in the passing moments of time. Each day I wake up and look out the window, and each day the view outside changes – the light, the colours, the icebergs that have drifted in and out of the bay. It feels like a metaphor for life. Greenland is a frontier of wilderness and a place to feel nature in full force. As the fog begins to move off, I pack up and, barely feeling the cold, run in for coffee and breakfast.

A mere ten minutes later I’m cramming cereal into my mouth and necking a mocha when, as if called by magic, the whales arrive. Even from inside the common hut, we can hear the breath of a humpback breaking the surface. Suddenly, and less than 100 metres away from us, there she is, emerging next to an iceberg.

One of the stories I’ve tasked myself to capture on this expedition is on marine mammals in Greenland. While I realise the unlikelihood of shooting all the wildlife I’d like to feature in this article, the whale shots I captured a few days before now left me particularly disappointed. So, when five humpback whales arrive on your doorstep, you shoot.

And so, for the next few hours, I fly my drone, shoot on telephoto, and enjoy the show – a majestical display of bubble net feeding, fin slapping, and the general playfulness of whales amongst the icebergs.