Polar Bear Photo Safari Day Three...

On Wednesday we spent the day with a video team that is partly responsible for the filming of Disney's African Cats Nature Series. Gaye and I were in Kenya while they were filming this movie in September and saw them videoing for the movie. The videographers from Disney were up doing a documentary on North American animals. From here, they were off to Florida to video the aligators. Yesterday we not only had a slow day with no bears, but half the photographers in the lodge left, so we were down to 9 photographers yesterday. Last night another crew came in. Today we had a crew from ABC. They are doing a piece for nightline on polar bears. Along with the ABC crew are a crew from WWF (not the wrestlers, the world wildlife fund).

It was an interesting day. At about -45 with a wind chill, we stayed out for about 6 hours, only coming in about two or three times to quickly warm up and get a bite to eat. (It amazes me how warm those parkas are!). We were watching over a fresh den. At 2p.m., a cub poked his little head out of the den. Just my luck, I was in the van warming my toes up! Finally by about 6p.m. tired and cold, 20 photographers started taking down their gear and loading up the vans. With only a few people left outside, the little guy poked his head out of the hole and started almost posing a little bit. Most of us rushed back out. The light was great and we got some pretty good baby polar bear images. 15 minutes later, the light died and we left back for the lodge. I got about 3 or 4 pretty good images. In the end, not bad for 6 hours in the cold.
New Edit:
Several months after we got back from this safari, WWF posted a video from this day on youtube. It is ultra cute. You can view it here:

Images on my new website from this safari can be found here.


On the drive home, we found another set of tracks. I think this bodes well for tomorrow. We have one den that should serve us well tomorrow along with tracks and another den that they know of that may be active. Also, the sun is supposed to come out tomorrow and polar bears photograph the best in nice sunlight.

Polar Photo Safari Day Two...

Bears one, photographers one. We got skunked today. Not much to report. -35 degrees. Bad light. I was sick, sick, sick. Damn motion sickness! Eight hours of nothing but motion sickness.It is difficult when you can't see any horizons. Yucky! On a bright note, they found two active dens at the end of the day. We will go check them out first thing tomorrow. It is supposed to be -45 tomorrow. The light will still likely be yucky for one more day. Fingers crossed, but the forecast is looking good after tomorrow.

Polar Bear Photo Safari Day One...

A respectable first day. We found a mother all curled up at about 11:30a.m. We watched her for an hour or so, then finally one cub emerged. It was pretty active and played all around his mommy for at least an hour. We figured that he must be alone, when a second cub emerged. Although the background was horrible, it was still a pretty fun sighting as we stayed until 6:30p.m. 

The weather was pretty decent. It was only about -20 to -25 which is really warm for up here. That being said, we   stood at our cameras for six hours until we lost the light. Crappy background, but all in all a fun day and a good start to our safari. I took about 3400 pictures today. I have been trying to post some pictures to this blog, but they won't upload easily for some reason. I guess I will have to try later. In the meantime, you can see a few shots on my facebook page.

Polar Bears: Travel Day...

Interesting first day. The flight from Edmonton to Winnipeg was fine. The luggage arrived, all was good. I saw a photographer standing over by the check in area with what seemed like camera equipment coming out of every orfice. Oldest trick in the book. Weigh yourself down with camera gear in every pocket imaginable (Richard was wearing a photo vest with pockets all over). Then when they weigh your bags you remain under weight. As soon as they weigh your bags, you put all the equipment back in the bags again and load the plane. For some reason it doesn't register that perhaps the photographer is wearing 20 pounds in camera equipment. They only look at his bag on the scale. Anyway, we go to register and we of course each have a few bags, so they ask us "which bag would you like to go to Churchill? Which one is necessary?" I don't know about you, but I always go on photography excursions with unnecessary equipment. We are stunned and both reply "All of them." To which they explain that we can only choose one bag and the rest will get sent to us in a day or two. Miss two days of photography in the mean time??Yeah, that doesn't work so well for us, so after a lengthy discussion, we figure out that we can call a cab and go over to the cargo hanger and have it sent up as cargo. That works. Glad we thought of it.

Okay, so we get to Churchill and eventually so does our gear. We pick up my parka and get a bite to eat. Low and behold there is a bone in my hamburger. Go figure. A bone?! Oh well, it was good and now it was free. I was hungry. I didn't care. It kind of makes me wonder what kind of "burger" I just ate though.

The train to Chesnae is broken down, so we pile in the van and off we go. Two hours later, the van breaks down. The transmission is leaking, so we wait for reinforcements to come and pick us up. Finally at 11:30p.m. we arrive at the Lodge. Long day, but we are looking forward to tomorrow. Hopefully we will see bears. Sounds like it has been hit and miss this year with the bears. Some good sightings, a few really good sightings and lots of sitting on dens waiting for them to come out. Sometimes a whole day of waiting on a den empty handed. Oh well, win a few, lose a few. Hopefully tomorrow is the day for us. We'll see. I'll blog about it tomorrow night when we get in.

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number 1

Work flow... Okay, not the most important lesson, nor the least. No chronological order. This is trial and error. I think everyone has their own system and that's okay. I don't believe there is a right or wrong way. It is more what works best for you. When I go on safari, I typically take between 6,000 to 20,000 pictures per safari, so I really need a good way of organizing my images, so I can easily and quickly find any pictures that I am looking for at a later date. In this blog, I am going to share how I organize my work flow.

For my work flow I like to make a folder, title it according to the subject and date it was shot. I do this between each safari drive or at the end of each day. I Copy the pictures to that folder on the first hard drive, then copy it again to a second hard drive. Sometimes the computer gets interrupted copying the files somehow. Be careful because if this happens, not all of your pictures will be copied to your hard drive. Make sure that the number of pictures on your card corresponds with the number of files in each folder before you delete the camera card.

A lot of photographers catalogue with lightroom. It is convenient and you can edit them from there, but I don't like that work flow for my own reasons, so I guess I am a rebel. I just don't like it. Don't get me wrong, I love lightroom. I just don't like to use it for cataloguing my photos. Instead, my pictures are all in a folder and I open them in bridge within photoshop. Likely not the most common way, but at the end of the day, I think you have to do what works best for you.

My next issue with workflow is organizing your pictures from good and bad.  I go through all of the pictures and pick out my favourites and make a copy of each picture in a favourites folder. Over the next year, I will likely go through all of the pictures once or twice more. Each time I go through them I tend to find another couple images that I missed the first time.

Not the most exciting blog, but believe it or not, I did go through quite a bit of trial and error before I figured out a system that I like.

Tuesday I fly out to Wapusk National Park to photograph polar bear mom's and cubs. I will try to blog daily over my safari as a diary. The sightings aren't guaranteed. Some days you have great sightings, some times we blank and sometimes the storms and weather prevent us from going out at all. So if you are curious about what a wildlife safari in the arctic is like, follow my next week of blogging from March 9th to 17th.

Polar bears starting Wednesday. Until then...

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number Two

Ten Biggest Mistakes and Lessons…

Number Two:

Traveling with camera equipment can be challenging. It costs a fortune and it's fragile. For that reason, I always try my best to bring my camera equipment on as carry on. I have heard horror stories about airlines losing baggage and have seen their workers throwing around bags as though they are playing some kind of “bag toss game”.

As a photographer, my worst nightmare is discovering that my camera gear has been stolen or damaged en route. Especially if I am going to the safari destination as opposed to coming home.

My first tip is to buy camera bags that are meant for airline travel. I really like think tank bags as they have a line of camera bags that have been specifically designed to fit in over head compartments and underneath seats. The other thing that I like about them is that the main compartment locks the zippers into a combination locking mechanism thus keeping your gear safe. My think tank bag also has a lock on the end of a wire that is hidden away behind a zippered pocket. I love that feature because sometimes I find myself traveling straight for two or three days. I don’t sleep very well on planes, so sometimes in airports I find myself having a difficult time staying awake. If I think I might doze off, I simply take out this cable, lock it around my other camera gear and lock it all to my chair. That way, all my gear is locked and secured together in case I fall asleep for a few minutes.

Sometimes when traveling domestically, you can find yourself on smaller planes and can't carry on any of your equipment with you. Remember this phrase. “May I valet my camera equipment?”  Often the people at the airline counters will say no immediately. It is important to stay calm and explain that you understand that there isn't any room in the over head compartment on this plane, but please could you valet your equipment to the plane so your gear is carefully stored on the plane last. That way, you can see them put it on the plane. This gives me piece of mind regarding how it is handled and I know it is going on the right plane. Secondly, it comes off first, so it is waiting for you right at the door when you get off the plane. This gives me extra piece of mind that it won’t be thrown around by the guys in the back and there is less likelihood of the equipment being damaged or stolen if you are watching them loading and unloading your gear and delivering it to you.

Ten Biggest Safari Mistakes and Lessons...Number Three

Lesson number three...This is the easiest and yet the hardest lesson of them all.


First shoot in raw. Stop shooting in jpegs! Jpegs are compressed files to begin with and every time you edit them, you lose even more image clarity. Every time you edit a jpeg, it is like passing a handful of sand from one person to another to another. At the end of the line, the product isn't the quality that it started with. With Raw images, you can edit them a million times if you like. If you don't like what you did, it is simple to start again from scratch. Sometimes, I look at pictures that I edited four years ago and think "I didn't do that picture justice, or I think of a technique that may make the picture look more appealing.

Mother and daughter elephant in
Tarrangire National Park, Tanzania

Having fun with sepia. Same picture,
different interpretation.

Second, learn to use photoshop and lightroom and/or other types of editing software. We are in the digital age and part of digital photography is digital editing. 


One of the great things about photography is the option to continue learning and never master. There are always new techniques to learn and different ways of viewing and interpreting what you are seeing. Photography also provides a wide spectrum of ways to capture experiences and moments that you can celebrate, record and recall for the rest of your life; and beyond your time, potentially touching lives for years after you are gone.