Polar bear at 12 o'clock...

Nice plunging shot on the broken ice sheet and great composition with the colorful deck.The fisheye  effect works good here on the fog invaded distance.This reminds me of the spring breakups on our local harbour as can be observed from the high point on the bridge;no polar bear here though.Excellent image!

Meilleures salutations-Laurent

Thanks Laurent - quite a thrill to be hundreds of miles from land in this hostile, seemingly barren, environment and finding warm blooded carnivores roaming about!

Good shot, looks great!

A truly fantastic and original shot!

Such a cruise in Svalbard is one of my dream (but God, workshops with few participants are so pricey). I'm surprised by the amount of drift ice for a shot taken in late August. Was the ice floe already reforming? Or are those ice sheets rests of the preceding winter?

Best regards,

Alain

Hi Alain, We sailed to 82.5 degrees north to reach the ice and once there I really had my doubts we would actually find a polar bear. It's a vast empty place, but the polar bears are curious creatures and sought us out. After staying overnight in the pack ice we awoke to several lone males eyeing us up. Unfortunately, we didn't come across any females with cubs and so witnessed no interactions. The ice boundary is well defined and is often quite misty/foggy making photography of distant polar bears all the more difficult.

I agree these trips are costly and these small old research vessels getting more and more expensive to maintain/refit; perhaps these photo expeditions will become a thing of the past. Not a family vacation though, so to keep the cost down find a couple of photographer buddies and a triple cabin in the bilges. However, if I could do only one, I would, without a doubt, choose Antarctica over Svalbard; Penguins are a lot more accommodating since, unlike polar bears, you can be amongst them when you make a landing!