Alaska, 2018

This photograph – taken high up on the North Slope of Alaska on Thursday morning – is special for us. It is a photograph I have always aspired to take. The best pictures can never be retaken.

There were two or three key elements to its capture. Firstly, because the physical enormity of an adult bear is best conveyed head on and from low on the ground, we had to try and find a position where the terrain offered a horizon and an incline between me and the bear. The second and more important dynamic was to use the 25 mph wind to our favour.

Bears can smell us from a long way away so long as they are downwind. Then of course – the overriding factor – was our safety. At all times we had to have an escape route. We knew what to do here and I had the best Inuit guide in the area. I felt safe with him, but please do not try this at home.

This bear is enormous and my positioning shows that off. It was all over in maybe five seconds – but I will never forget them.

People understandably worry about polar bear numbers – but be assured there is a load of big healthy bears on the North Slope. I think we saw over 25 in a week.

Pryramiden, Svalbard 2019

I know Pyramiden quite well – I have visited 4 times. It is a largely abandoned Russian mining town that sits at 78.2 degrees north – making it the most northerly community in the world. Only six people now live there full time, but it remains a ghostly reminder of the USSR. Soviet culture, architecture and politics permeate the town, from the block-style housing to the bust of Lenin—the world’s northernmost statue of that communist revolutionary— which gazes down, fatherly and proud, on Pyramiden’s main square.

I have always wanted to get a big photograph of this creepy place, but I needed winter, winds and a palpable sense of the frozen north. This is not a place to photograph in the summer. Most of all I needed a polar bear. In early spring 2019, I had my moment.

There is enough detail in the background layer of this photograph to make out factory buildings, chimneys, carts and tracks and indeed a disused mineshaft. The light was kind and the wind ferocious. With the wind chill, this was as cold as I can remember working with a camera. I had to wear one glove and manual focus was not easy. This was not a time to use autofocus on that bear – not with the wind and medley of whites.

The photograph is indeed a big photograph – bigger than I could have possibly wished for. There is a large amount of luck involved as the adult female bear came into town at the perfect time – one of just 5 adult bears we saw in Svalbard that week.

This is the land of norse legends, myths and fables. The photograph is so visually detached from our day to day experiences that it looks like a fairytale or a painting. This is surely my Game of Thrones moment and now I have seen what is North of the Wall.

This photograph was taken whilst leading an assignment with @naturalworldsafaris – a special thank you to the brilliant team there for organizing the adventure.

Ice Queen, 2019

Svalbard, Norway 2017

I should start by saying that I have generally been disappointed by my own work with polar bears in Svalbard. I haven’t tended to do them or their habitat justice. This is a “Giants’ Kingdom” and my images from previous trips have been too marginal to do either the giants or their kingdom justice. Luck evens itself out, but nature can seem cruel in its distribution of content and in this barren archipelago, I don’t recall many favours until June 2017.

This year, however, I did have some luck and came home with three images. There is no doubt in my mind that this photograph of a big male polar bear lends weight to the contention that wildlife photography does not need to be reportage – it can be art. The photograph is elevated by the negative space and the bear’s anonymity rather than weakened by it. Since 2011, I have spent over 30 days shooting in Svalbard and this is my favourite image of a polar bear in this part of the Arctic – indeed the more I look at it, the more proud I am. As my fellow Scottish photographer and friend, the great Harry Benson, once said “great images can never be repeated”. Others will decide if this is a great image, but it is certainly not going to be repeated.

The eye is immediately grabbed by the detail we recognise but have perhaps never seen – the distinctive pads on the sole of his foot. The central pad, that resembles the Nike style “swoosh”, is the epicentre of a photograph that owes its differentiating content entirely to this right foot. The image is made complete by its own lack of completeness – the storytelling is started by the camera and finished by the viewer. We are asked to finish the story, not just read the story and the Spartan economy of the narrative helps us along the way. Less is more in the Arctic – its beauty is in its simplicity and the enormity of the white detail. It is not a noisy place – in fact it is characterised by the lack of noise. The image pays homage to that variable – it conveys a true sense of place. This is not a natural human habitat – it is in fact our final frontier.

The irony was that it was the very last of a sequence of 60 images I took of the polar bear. A second after this moment, this most solitary of predators was over the horizon and our paths will never cross again. I did not press the trigger with this image in mind – it was such an intense 15 minutes that it would be most disingenuous to suggest that it was preconceived. The heart was beating too fast to consider creating art – these moments sometimes just happen. It was only when I returned to the ship, that I realised I had an extremely evocative photograph.

Alaska 2015

In some ways this is a ridiculously lucky picture – it is rare to have this sort of access to polar bears in the wild. Furthermore, the positioning of the second polar bear is almost perfect and that was totally outside of my control.

But I do believe that in fact this image endorses an approach which leans heavily on desk research, discomfort in the field and the preference for proximity, immersion and wide angle lenses. The 35m lens is my favourite lens and if I was to carry one picture in my wallet to explain why, it would be this picture. The 35m is such a crisp and examining conduit.

At the time, I could not see what was in the viewfinder as I was holding the lens 30 inches below my eyes in order to get the right ground up perspective. All I remember is my heart pounding with a mixture of fear and adrenaline – which in retrospect is hardly surprising.

My sense is that this picture will stand the test of time.

Alaska, 2018

This “once in a lifetime” encounter with an adult polar bear in the choppy Beaufort Sea was a real test to capture. Keeping the camera and its long lens steady in this situation is close to impossible. My frame would move as the small boat moved – sometimes quite violently.
When the light is poor, the photographer has no chance with these moments, but on this glorious morning I did have a chance as the light was so strong that I could work with a very fast shutter speed. That way the impact of the movement of the camera and the boat could be nullified.
It is moments like this that make the job so rewarding – but they are few and far between. It is imperative to put in the hours. What a majestic mammal.

What a majestic mammal.