TV Review - From the Edge with Peter Lik

On March 31^st, the Weather Channel [of all places] premiered a new half-hour series – From the Edge with Peter Lik. 

Mr. Lik has fancy galleries all over the world where stunning, enormous prints can be purchased for four to six-figure prices.  If you go to his web site [http://www.peterlik.com/ ], you will learn he is “the world’s most honored photographer” among other things.  While I will be the first to agree that his landscape photographs are spectacular, I cannot recommend this program as a photography show.  It is more of a travel and sight-seeing program.

This first episode – Capture the Gods, The Big Island, Hawaii showed Lik chasing images of lava, waterfalls and the night sky.  The format is commercial TV with quick cut editing and rock music.  This is not National Geographic or PBS and not very educational.  It’s more about the places he visits and his rugged, sleeveless, Aussie enthusiasm and less about what he does to capture the shot. 

Some of the film sequences are terrific as he flies over the Kilauea volcano and boats to the shoreline where molten lava spills into the sea.  I couldn’t help but wish I had boats and helicopters at my disposal.   Alright, so I am envious.  However, I did appreciate the segment where he shot the stars from the top of Mauna Kea and how a 30-second exposure can reveal light the human eye cannot see. 

If you go to the Weather Channel web site http://www.weather.com/tv/tvshows/peter-lik/episodes/episode-guide , you can see this program and the list of locales that will be visited through the series.  Yes, each segment within this episode did have some kind of photography tip…e.g. the best time for sunrise color is the few minutes before the sun breaks the horizon; it’s difficult to get a good dawn shot of lava from a rocking boat.   But overall, this was more about him and the wonderful places he’s visiting and less about actually photographing them.