2015 Photography Highlights- Churchill Sunsets and Polar Bear Moms and Cubs

This past polar bear viewing season in Churchill, Manitoba was a huge success.  Many photographers and guides said it was one of the best seasons they could remeber.  Cold weather came early and brought in the bears, but freeze up didn’t occur until all of our trips had finished.  I am going to do a series of posts showing highlights.

One evening as we headed back to town after a beautiful day of watching polar bears lit by a low angle mid-November sunshine we had something magical happen.  A bear walked past us just as the sun dropped to the horizon.   The sun was still a little intense for the perfect backlight shot, but it still worked out ok to capture a nice silhouette with the sunset in the background.  The second and third images you will notice a starburst-effect sun.  I achieved this by simply setting my aperture to the highest number my lens would allow, or f-32.  When the aperture is set to a very small opening (high f-stop number), the light bends around the blades and causes a star formation radiating from bright lights.

A polar bear wanders past us, at just the right time.  My aperture in this image was f/8, so the sun looks more like a blob.

My aperture was f/32 to create the starburst sun. At 800 ISO my shutter speed was still 1/125 of a second since light was plentiful.

Some folks don’t seem to prefer the starburst effect, but I use it often to enhance the atmosphere of sunset shots. Here is another starburst sunset shot from this past season. I wish there had a bear on this pond!

Another example of using my lenses highest aperture to create a starburst sunset.

It was a great year for mothers and cubs. Here are a few of my favorite “family shots” from the season.

SOme of our best mother and cub sightings are from the road between town and the Churchill Wildlife Management Area. We found this family on the Coast Road just one mile from town just after sunset.

This is the same family from a different angle. I chose to make this black and white in Lightroom when I processed the image.

A mother and an almost year old cub runs down the coast in low profile to avoid being detected by large, dangerous males.

Last year I started taking images of folks showing off their “trophy shots.” Here are some folks having a blast on the tundra photographing polar bears.

Sometimes the iphone photographers get the best shots when the bears come up for a closeup look at our group. What a shot!

Wilf Powell, a British tropical entomologist, had a great time despite being out of his element!

Ami Jones, Natural Habitat operations coordinator joined my group for a day and practiced her photography skills.

For more info and tips of wildlife photography, check this awesome new site “The Nature Photographer”
Click here to check out Polar Bear Photography Expeditions with Natural Habitat.