Svalbard and the high Arctic, the Cape of Norway & the British Isles
In August, I was aboard the National Geographic Explorer for three back-to-back trips: Svalbard and the high Arctic, the Cape of Norway and the British Isles. I had the good fortune to be able to include Becky with me on the first week, and our daughter, Maggie, accompanied me on a portion of the second week. This trip took the ship from near ice-pack, above 80 degrees North to Portsmouth, Britain on the southernmost point of the UK, about 50 degrees North. The variety of photo ops were many, to say the least.
I’ve included on this “Where’s Jay” a series of photos of a polar bear we rudely awakened. This bear had been sleeping on the ice, spotted a couple of miles distant by a crew member-how they see them at that distance is a story in it’s own right. After sighting the sleeping bear, the ship moved slowly and directly towards the animal. As this bear was on an ice shelf that extended for a distance, we pushed very slowly through the frozen surface for about an hour before getting within “shooting distance”.
It’s interesting that the bears are not frightened by the sounds of the ship crunching through ice, but voices or metallic sounds are enough to often send the bear back into the water. This sleeping animal would awaken a few times, look around and go back to sleep. After we got within a few hundred yards, I think it realized that the approaching large shape of the ship was not going to go away, and it attempted to rise to check out the challenge.
We do try to anthropomorphize animals, and I couldn’t help doing that here…it appears this animal was so deep in sleep that finally trying to fully awaken was a chore not desired at this moment.
Olympus E30 with a 90-250mm f2.8 lens, EC-20 2x tele converter, 1/500th at f6.3, 400 ISO
For additional images from this trip, please visit this URL:
