Emperor Penguins at Halley, Antarctica by Oliver Bonner

The emperor penguin colony at Windy Bay is one of the main breeding sites in Antarctica. Each year, several thousand birds gather here to breed and give birth to the penguin chicks in early August. This panorama was taken on Friday 24th August 2012 during a visit to the colony from Halley VI Research Station by some of the Wintering team. Seven members of the 14 strong team, abseiled onto the sea ice in temperatures of -25C and winds of ~10 knots. The penguins are extraordinarily inquisitive and seemed entirely un-phased by our appearance!

I didn't actually intend to stitch the photo together into such a large image, and therefore there are some artefacts and flaws in the final image. It was taken with a Nikon D7000 using a 135mm f/2 lens at f/3.2 at ISO200 (I was using aperture priority mode - by mistake - so the shutter speed did vary).