Posts Tagged ‘svalbard norway’

Land of the Ice Bears

Monday, August 15th, 2011

Polar Bear in Svalbard, Norway

One of the top animals on our list to photograph has been the “Ice Bear” or Polar Bear.  These elusive creatures are getting harder and harder to spot in the wild but we knew we could count on Lindblad Expedition’s National Geographic Explorer and their crew to find them for us.  We travelled on the National Geographic Explorer to Antarctica last year and had an amazing time.  The ship, crew, staff, Nat Geo photo instructors and Antarcitca itself was one of the most amazing places we’ve been to.  Many of the passengers on the ship with us in the Antarctic raved about the trip to the Arctic.  Since seeing Polar Bears was on our wish list we booked the trip immediately after returning home.

Polar Bear in field of arctic flowers

Lindblad calls the trip to the arctic the Land of the Ice Bears.  They market the trip as an 11 day tour of the Svalbard archipelago.  In actuality, you only have 5 days on the ship searching for the elusive Ice Bear.  All of the other days are travel days or embarking/disembarking from the ship.  The trip was still amazing even though it was shorter than we expected.  An extra 2 days at sea exploring the archipelago would have been perfect.  It would have allowed extra time to search for Polar Bears, Walruses, Whales and most importantly not feel rushed when trying to get that perfect shot.  Overall, the photography experience in Antarctica was far superior and I came away from that trip with much better pictures than this one.  Even though it was only a 5 day trip they packed as much into every moment as they could and I did end up with a few good photos.

Over the next week or so I’ll do a few posts that describes what we did and what we saw each day we were on the ship.  Similar to what I did for our expedition to Antarctica.

The photo instructors onboard the ship put together a video slideshow of the passengers best photos from the trip.  Miki and I submitted some of our favorites.  We tried to submit pictures that other people wouldn’t have posted so we tried to get a little creative and kept the wildlife pictures to a minimum since everyone else had lots of them.

Some of my favorites.

- Polar Bears above.

Arctic Landscape

The Ice of the Arctic

Waterfall flowing off the Austfonna ice cap. Largest ice cap by area in Europe.

Kayaking in the Arcitc. (Gopro camera attached to end of kayak paddle)

and here are a few of Miki’s favorites…

(more…)

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Posted in Arctic, Photography, Svalbard, Travel, Wildlife | No Comments »

Iceland’s Ice

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Vatnajökull Glacier Lagoon

You would be surprised.  Iceland doesn’t have that much ice.  The landscape is green in many places as you can see from the pictures in my previous posts.  However, if you come all the way to Iceland you need to find some ice so off we went to the Vatnajökull Glacier… and look… we found ice :)

Vatnajökull Glacier Lagoon in Jokulsarlon

The Vatnajökull Glacier is the largest glacier by volume in Europe.  The second largest is in Svalbard, Norway which we also visited later during our Europe trip (more on that later).

Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon

The glacier lagoon in Jökulsárlón is a great photo destination.  Huge pieces of the glacier calve off into this lagoon before they float out to sea and eventually melt.  You can even take a cruise out into the lagoon to get up close and personal with the icebergs.  The bergs weren’t as big as what we saw in Antarctica but still impressive none the less.

Climbing on the Vatnajökull Glacier

Our next stop on the ice tour in Iceland was to do some ice climbing on the Vatnajökull Glacier in Skaftafell National Park with Icelandic Mountain Guides.  We were booked to do ice climbing but the eruption of Grimsvotn volcano in May, 2011 rained ash down all over the glacier.  The ash made the glacier very dirty and would have gunked up the climbing gear possibly ruining it or at worst making it unsafe.  So, we did the Full Day Adventure Tour instead which turned out to be a great tour.

I was initially pretty disappointed that we couldn’t go ice climbing and that the glacier was dirty.  I really like taking photos of the vivid blue colors glaciers have.  However, the dirty glacier had an interesting look and I got some unique pictures.

A Dirty Vatnajökull Glacier

While we didn’t get to go ice climbing we did get to use crampons and ice axes on our glacier hike which at least made us look cool.

All geared up on the Vatnajökull glacier

We also had a brief chance to rappel down into a in moulin.  This may not look dangerous but moulins are holes that go straight down to the bottom of the glacier.  The depth of the glacier around here is over 400 meters.  Good thing the guides at Icelandic Mountain Guides know what they are doing because that is my wife on the end of the rope.

Rappelling into a Moulin

After a hard day of seeking out ice in Iceland a visit to the famous Blue Lagoon was a welcomed treat.  It’s a little pricey to get in but it’s one of things you must do if you visit iceland.  Don’t forget to smear the silica mud on your face.  It’s suppose to have healing powers for various skin ailments… even if you don’t have a skin problem it still feels pretty good and looks even funnier.

Blue Lagoon Iceland

Rule #1 of portrait photography. Don't use a wide angle lens up close to your subject. Sorry Miki :)

Lastly, need to give a shout out to our trusty little Toyota Yaris that got us around in our search for Icelandic ice in style… well… maybe not in style but at least it got us around.

Toyota Yaris in Iceland

 

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Posted in Iceland, Photography, Travel | 4 Comments »