As a new biography shows, Ponting's extraordinary photographs sealed the legend of Scott's doomed expedition 20 February 2021 • 12:00pm Black and white stories: Ponting's image of Thomas Clissold and an Emperor penguin, Antarctica, 1910 Credit: Herbert Ponting What is it like to photograph in Antarctica? Well, be careful of your tongue. In 1911, Herbert Ponting, the photographer on Captain Scott’s doomed Terra Nova expedition, absent-mindedly licked his lips while his face was pressed against the camera. Touching the bare metal, his tongue “froze fast instantaneously; and to release myself I had to jerk it away, leaving the skin of the end of my tongue sticking to my camera, and my mouth bled so profusely that I had to gag it with a handkerchief”.