I love blue icebergs. I intend to in the next year publish a book and do an exhibit on ice. I am kind of fascinated by ice and rust. Now that is some polar opposites. This is a northern iceberg. It was photographed on my trip to the arctic circle this past August. The ice in the north is different than in the Antarctic. I all make another trip to the arctic this summer and leave again for Antarctica again in a few weeks. Look for more ice in the near future.
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.
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.
Sometimes you are at the right spot at the right time. This was one of those cases. A week ago while cruising around in front of a glacier we could see a lot of calving going on. This is when chucks of ice break off of a glacier and form icebergs. It sounds like thunder. It causes giant splashes and huge wave. The trick is predicting where it might happen and being ready. Luck was with me as I caught this giant calving at the right moment. The motor drive was purring at 5 frames a second. I love this shot as you can see the giant ice chucks breaking off as well as hundreds of birds that took flight when it happened. Click on the image and look at the large version. CLICK on the image to see larger version Click again to see even bigger.
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.
Arriving at this location we faced a gigantic and very long glacier or ice wall. It is actually part of the permanent ice pack on Svalbard. zThere must have been a hundred waterfalls flowing from this place. This one image is showing a waterfall of about 50 feet coming out of a glacier as water carves it way through the glaciers. Some of the other waterfalls come of the top. I have pictures of those too so you’ll see them somewhere along the way. Pretty amazing to see all of this.
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.