I love Svalbard which is a part of Norway and some of the most northern Islands in the world. I travel to Svalbard at least once a year. One of the highlights is photographing, and I look for two particular animal types. Polar Bears and Arctic Foxes. Here’s an Arctica Fox shot on a trip about a year ago. They have a coat that changes from dark to white once a year. They also don’t have a very long life; thus they tend to get the most out of their time on earth. Adorable creatures.
Wow, what a trip. I’m now home from Greenland. I leave again on Monday for another trip but today I wanted to post some photos from our first day of the trip. Before we left Svalbard we had a day to explore. I photographed Walrus and Arctic Fox. These images are just two from an amazing session shooting these fox. There were five of them and one caught a bird and took off from the others. These little guys are amazingly fast. I shot these with the new Sony a9 and 100-400mm GM lens. Auto-focus was amazing and I set the camera on manual at 1000th sec. the ISO was set on auto. This method allowed me to freeze action and allowed the ISO to vary for the light.
Hard to believe that a week ago I was in winter clothing exploring the northern polar regions of Svalbard, Norway. What an amazing trip and I worked with two different groups of the nicest people on the the trip. I was an instructor along with Peter Cox for the Luminous-landscape – Rockhopper Workshops my day job. We saw amazing sights as well as some real up close encounters with wildlife. On our last day we found 2 Arctic foxes playing and we were able to shoot hundreds of images. This is one of my favorites. It just draws you in. Shot with a Nikon D800e and the new Tamron 150-600mm lens. I can’t wait to make a print of this one.
It’s nice to be back home. I have spent the last three weeks with Peter Cox and Morton Jørgensen cruising the Svalbard area with 2 workshop groups. We were on the prow for wildlife and great landscapes. Overall on both workshops we have a mission accomplished. We had the chance to photograph Polar Bears, Walrus, many birds, whales, glaciers and as in this image above Arctic Fox. The Arctic Fox is a hearty animal having to live in Arctic Conditions for most of the year. For the winter months it is a pure white animal and then in the summer months it sheds it coat and looks pretty much like the image above until late August when it grows its winter coat back. I had the chance to photograph this fox on two occasions in the last few weeks. I have quite a few beautiful images from the few hours spent with this fox and its brother. Look for more soon.