Polar bears are the most solitary of animals. They can cover miles and miles of frozen sea ice on a daily basis without interacting with anyone or anything.
There are four mainstream placesin the world where photographers tend to travel to encounter polar bears, and each has its own challenges. Churchillin Manitoba has a thriving tourist trade in the autumn, where visitors can jump aboard six-foot-high tundra buggies and charge around looking for polar bears that are congregating in the area and waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze over. The problem I have with Manitoba is that the backdrops can be fairly forlorn and empty and the angle of view is always from at least six feet up.
Then there is Wrangel Island off the northern coast of Russia—a raw location for sure, but logistically extremely challenging and also a destinationthat requires the investment of timeand money.
The North Slope of Alaska, and specifically Kaktovik, is a bleak place— bleaker even than Manitoba—but in September and October it is the best place in the world to see and get closeto polar bears. Contextual layers to the image, however, are virtually impossible.
Svalbard is not the best place to see polar bears. I have spent 36 days searching for bears there over the last few years, and in total I have seen just 17—fewer than one every two days.
But this is not a numbers game,and Svalbard is, by some distance, the most stunning of these four placesto photograph the polar bear. The backdrops have grandeur, scale, and depth. Even without polar bears, Svalbard in spring is one of the most stunning destinations in the world. The same cannot be said for the other locations.
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