Polar Bear from Churchill

jaminphoto

Photos from my trip to Churchill. Its an amazing trip. I saw more bears than I expected The weather is colder than I expected

More photos in my website, http://jaminphoto.smugmug.com/Animals/Churchill-Polar-Bear/

#1 Polar Bear resting


#2 Mom and two cubs



#3 Polar Bear walking on ice with tundra buggy in the background silhouette



#4 Arctic Fox hunting. We were lucky to found this busy little guy. We get to observed him for about 5 minutes, but it was an excellent 5 minutes as it was walking on almost perfect distance, on a great light and nice background.



#5 Polar bear and a cub walking on frozen bay



#6 Close up face of a Polar Bear



#7 Polar Bear dragging a seal kill.
Another struck of luck, we found this bear with a seal kill. We got to observe from the moment it jumped the seal(although it was mostly covered by ice, so I didnt get any photo) to the bear eating the seal, then a bigger bear came and took over the kill and left the scraps for smaller bears. It was one of nature magical moment I have the fortune to experience.



#8 Here's the bigger bear that stole the kill from the bear in the previous photo. It already have the seal's blood on him when we first saw him. So probably he had two seals that day, he's one happy bear.



thanks for looking,
--r

Rhuarc

Great shots! Especially like the one of the larger bear that took the kill. I thought the sunset one with the bear sillhouetted had a reallly unique feel to it also. I'm jealous!

Snowgirl

What an amazing series and tremendous experience you had!

While I like them all, the arctic fox one really gets me. White on white is so hard to shoot, especially a smaller animal. Well done!clap

kdog

Wonderful photos. I'm so envious of your trip!

I'm amazed you were able to get that close in some of your shots.

Regards,
-joel

Jody Melanson

All excellent, but # 3 is really cool.

eenusa

Thanks for Sharing
Isn't the Churchill experience amazing! We went in November '08 and had the time of our lives; I was especially enthralled by the curiosity that brought the bears so close to us. I enjoyed seeing all of your photos and taking a virtual trip back to the icy tundra.

jaminphoto

Thanks for the comment everyone.

Some one asked me regarding equipment and the tundra buggy experience. So I thought I'll post it here too, it might be useful if someone thinking of going to Churchill.

Regarding equipment and tundra buggy experience:
I had with me three sets of camera
D700 + 500 f/4 + TC14E + grip
D90 + 70-200/2.8
GH1 + 14-140 f/3.5-5.6

the 500+1.4x was the main camera, most of the good opportunity will be around this distance or even farther, so bring your longest lens. The bear will sometimes get closer, so the 70-200 got to see some action too.
And of course some bear are less shy and they will walk right next to the buggy. A wide would be needed there. I use my GH1(I brought 20mm Nikkor but decided to avoid the hassle of swapping lens) as my wide. It also shot a very nice video, much much better quality video than the D90.
I would say the minimum you want to have for this trip would be 600mm (eg, crop body and 400mm lens).

The D700 proved to be very useful in this trip with its high ISO quality. The typical weather is cloudy. ISO 800-1600 was the most used ISO in the trip, couple of times I have to go 3200. Typical exposure with the D700 was 1/750 sec at f/8(f/4 + 1 stop from converter + 1 stop to gain sharpness)


Tundra Buggy experience
I joined a photography group, Shoot the light led by Chas Glatzer, so we had the buggy to ourselves.
Several advantage that I can think of compared to general tour:
* we kept the buggy relatively cold inside, we turned the heat to minimum. This will prevent condensation if you choose to shoot from the open back deck. And also prevent heat shimmer when shooting from windows.
* you get more space. each person had the whole row so the bear can be on either side of the buggy and you'll still get the opportunity to shoot. Also more space to put your gear and tripod(for shooting from the back deck)
* we can ask the driver to stop at any time if we see good photo opportunity
* the buggy can really rock when someone is walking. Fellow photographer will understand this and you're not considered rude to remind this fact from time to time. I doubt you can tell bunch of general tourist to stay still when there is a bear to see.

Most of the shot was done from window so bean bag was instrumental. There is an open deck at the rear of the buggy, most people don't shoot from there because it can be really cold when the wind blowing. It also quite a hassle and time consuming to get your tripod and gear setup in the back, so you might lost an opportunity.

Typical day of the trip: the buggy starts drive out 8:30am. the drive was very bumpy, bean bag is useful to weight down the big lens so it wont get tossed around. Usually it will take about 30-40 minutes before we saw the first bear. One day it took about 90 minutes to see the first bear of the day.
Around noon we stop somewhere and eat lunch. For lunch we brought a sandwich the night before, but you can set up with the buggy company to serve you lunch and hot drinks.
After lunch we continued drive around until 3:30pm then we had to start to drive back to the station. It is not really that bad, because we started to loose light by this time.
For clothing make sure you have layer that can stop the wind. Windstopper gloves is a very valuable item, because even when shooting through windows will expose your hand to the elements. When the wind blowing just with a liner I got from comfortable warm hand to cold numb finger in less than a minute.

--r

jaminphoto

eenusa,

you have nice gallery of the polar bear. Looks like you had more snow when you visited.

--r

eenusa

jaminphoto wrote:

eenusa,

you have nice gallery of the polar bear. Looks like you had more snow when you visited.

--r

We were there about 10 days later than you were. It doesn't take long for the landscape to change that time of the year ... we saw a huge difference in the amount of ice in the bay between our first day on the tundra and our last.

For anyone who has an interest in the experience - here's the link to my blog posts of our trip. Perhaps the info will prove useful to others who might have an interest in going up to Churchill.

http://2totravel.blogspot.com/search/label/Polar%20Bears%20of%20Churchill%202008

We also signed up for a photography group, which limited the number of people on the buggy. Plenty of room to go around. In my case - by the way - my longest lens was a 100-400 on a 40D ... while I did use the full zoom at times, I found that I was shooting mostly around the 200-300 mm range (+ the cropping factor of the 40D).

Maestro

What an experience. I think my favorite is the arctic fox though although the bloody polar bear is a close second.

torags

Very nice series; good captures & well executed.

R.Jay

Hi Ricardo. This series is what Dgrin is all about. Not only do we get to see some amazing photographs - but also get to share other peoples experiences and adventures. The bears expression in #1 is perfect. #7 is a 'magical moment' shot made all the better by the reflection of the bear in the water. #8 reminds me of an experience in the Etosha game reserve in South West Africa watching two 'bloodied' lionesses licking each others faces to clean themselves up after feasting on a kill.

Cheers, Richard.

FlyNavy

Amazing pics!
Thanks

Harryb

Outstanding series of images Ricardo.

It looks like a fantastic trip and it has me all kinds of envious. I have to talk my cold hating wife into the trip or preach to her the value of separate vacations.

How did you expose the white on white captures?

jaminphoto

Thanks for the comment everyone.

Richard,
I'm glad you like it. Seems like you had an awesome experience in Africa.

Harry,
Tell your wife its going to be worth the cold. I grew up in tropic country, and been living in SF Bay Area for the last 15 years. So cold for me is 45F.
Seriously though if you have the right clothing it wasn't really that bad.

And the white on white capture is actually pretty simple. Set the camera to manual exposure and spot metering, meter the snow to +2 and fire away!

--r

Awais Yaqub

Amazing photographs !!