In the Field

Grooming. Cape Churchill, MB, Canada. October 23, 2004.

This image was among the best "gifts" I received over the holiday season of 2009. During the holidays I was browsing through my RAW images taken during a trip to the Canadian tundra in 2004 when I found this image sitting in my collection in RAW, unprocessed form! Bonus! I'm not sure how I missed it the first 20 times I went through the image collection, but I was very pleased to find it. Surprisingly, when I re-discovered this image I immediately recalled all the details of the very memorable situation under which I captured it (which makes me wonder even more about why I had forgotten about the image!).

Anyway, this is a shot of yearling polar bear cub cleaning its fur while nestled up against its mother (the mother is the band of fur along the upper portion of the left edge of the frame). We encountered the free-ranging bears out on the tundra (exactly in the middle of nowhere!) and they allowed close approach with no outward sign of alarm or stress. This cub seemed particularly concerned with removing a few specks of dirt in the lighter undercoat of its fur (just visible in the lighter portion of fur near the bottom of the frame). After firing off the obligatory first few "record the event" shots, I sat back and waited until the very gentle cub gave me a composition where its very dark eyes and nose were clearly visible and stood out in contrast from the muted and soft tones of its luxuriant coat.

From a photographic perspective the biggest challenge in capturing this shot was finding enough depth of field to keep the critical regions of the cub's head, and the luxuriant coat, in sharp focus. I shot this image with a camera that had very limited high-ISO capabilities (a Nikon D2H that I rarely liked to take over ISO 200). I was hand-holding the camera using a lens with an effective focal length of 600 mm and had to risk camera shake at the low shutter speed (1/80s) an aperture of f8 dictated. Fortunately I was using a VR lens and the stabilization technology allowed me to push the boundaries of what one can get away with while hand-holding a long lens. Got lucky on this one!

While I quite like how this image looks in colour, it's also one that works for me in black & white too (view black and white version here).

Behind the Camera

Grooming. Cape Churchill, MB, Canada. October 23, 2004.

Digital Capture; Compressed RAW (NEF) 12-bit format; ISO 200.

Nikon D2H with Nikkor 200-400 mm f/4G ED-IF AF-S VR lens @ 400mm (600 mm EFL) - handheld. VR on and set to "Normal" mode.

1/80s @ f8; +0.67 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting of camera.

At the Computer

Grooming. Cape Churchill, MB, Canada. October 23, 2004.

RAW Conversion to 16-bit TIFF using Phase One's Capture One Pro 5. Three RAW conversions at different exposure settings. Exposure settings of -0.55 stops through to +0.75 stops.

Further digital corrections on 16-bit TIFF file using Adobe's Photoshop CS4 and Light Craft's LightZone. Photoshop adjustments included compositing and masking of 3 exposure versions, selective de-saturation of colours, and selective sharpening for web output. Final tonemapping, balancing and tweaking performed using the Tonemapper/Re-light tool in LightZone.

Conservation

Grooming. Cape Churchill, MB, Canada. October 23, 2004.

Ten percent of the revenue generated by this image will be donated to the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.

Species Status in Canada*: Special Concern (November 2002).

Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) are the largest terrestrial carnivores on the planet and the most carnivorous of all bears. They are highly specialized and feed almost exclusively on Ringed Seals. Polar Bears hunt their prey from ice sheets and are dependent upon these ice sheets for their survival.

Like any highly-specialized organism, Polar Bears are highly susceptible to habitat alteration. Climate change - natural or human-induced - is probably the greatest long-term threat to Polar Bear survival. The longer ice-free seasons experienced in the southern reaches of their distribution is already making it difficult for them to hunt.

The Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative seeks to ensure that the world-renowned wilderness, wildlife, native plants, and natural processes of the Yellowstone to Yukon region continue to function as an interconnected web of life, capable of supporting all of its natural and human communities, for current and future generations.

For more information on the status of Polar Bears in Canada, go to: http://www.speciesatrisk.gc.ca and search under "Polar Bears".

*as determined by COSEWIC: The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada