Daily Images by Kevin Raber
I am in the dolomites, Italy for a week leading a Phase One PODAS workshop. The weather today was beautiful and yielded this picture postcard definition of what the Dolomites is all about. expect to see plenty more as we get deeper into our week of shooting this amazing landscape.
This Polar Bear is at the edge of the Arctic Ice pack. Where does he go next? I think ti is kind of a symbolic image of the challenges the Polar Bear faces today. I love the bird in the shot.
This shot was made in Svalbard Norway on my recent Arctic Adventure. we were cruising this bay where a few glaciers were ending. Also, we were searching for Polar Bears. When we cruised by tis piece of ice in our Zodiacs, I had to ask the driver to go around a time or two. I finally saw the image in my viewfinder and fired away. I think I captured the essence of the iceberg as well as the big glacier behind it with the kind of light that we were experiencing at the moment. I really like this one.
When we traveled into the ice pack at 82.34 degrees last week we experienced a lot of polar bears. It is so hard to believe in the desolate environment there was so much life. Here’s a shot of one of the polar bears we encountered as it jumps from one ice berg to another. And, just to be clear this is ice pack ice that has broken up and is not an ice berg broken off of a glacier. These bears roam the ice pack hunting for seals. They jump, walk or swim to get where they need to go.
What amazes me about both Polar regions is the amount of wildlife that lives there. In the Arctic we ran across walruses quite often. One of them even sunk one of our beached Zodiacs. These are animals that are giants. Best known for the tusks. This shot was a lucky one for me as I caught it right after it raised its head from the water. I love the water dripping off the tusks. Shot with A Nikon D7100 and 80-400 lens which turned out to be the ideal set up for this kind of shooting.
I am now back in Svalbard, Norway after 10 days at sea. No internet, email or cell phones. Lots of amazing things. I traveled to latitude 82.34 degrees on the MV Quest exploring the Arctic. I have come back with an amazing set of images and the above shot is the first of many that will grace my blog. One of the biggest experiences was going farther north in our ship than has ever been done before. This is because the ice pack is shrinking. You read all about it and yes when you are there you can see things are changing very rapidly. This image today symbolizes a lot of what I see happening. It’s putting the Polar Bear on the edge. They have no connection to land as the ice pack has moved so far north. Here is a bear literally at the edge of the ice pack. I think it sums it up very well. I’ll have more images over the coming days and weeks.
On the way to the ball game in Indianapolis last week I saw this shot of a sculpture with the new Marriott hotel behind it. I lined it up in the viewfinder and shot. I like the contrasting colors and use of space. I will definitely go back and spend a bit more time with this view.
I visited the Rockies in Canada a year ago prepping for a photo workshop there. Great place with so many photographic opportunities. There are lakes and mountains and wildlife plus a really cool train curve where you gat a train and the mountains in a photo. This is a spot of Lane Minnewanka near Banff.
Visiting Alaska a couple of years ago I had the chance to photography wildlife. I was not a big shooter of wildlife as it requires patience and that is something I don’t have much of. But, when opportunity presents itself I’ll take advantage of it. This si a shot I think of a grizzly. Sounds good no matter if I was correct. I shot a whole series of this bear (obviously a mama) as she had two cubs with her. Later my son who knows a lot of stuff said I was too close and the bear would attack if it smelled fear. I assured him the only thing the bear was smelling was ignorance. Just don’t get too close.
This was shot in Scotland on a lake that some rich Scottish guy made just so it would remind his wife of a lake back in America where she was from. It’s one of those dream lakes. Perfect in so many ways. This shot was as if it was set up. Row boat, fall colors, subtle clouds. How could I go wrong? I was very conscious though of the ones and composition as I made this image. It works on many levels as a classic.