I have a feature story in the February/March 2012 issue of Photo Life magazine. This is the second story I’ve published that sprouted from a seven-week solo canoe trip in Nunavut (you can find the first one here). There are plenty more waiting in the wings, so stay tuned.
Unfortunately, Photo Life does not have a digital edition of their magazine online, so if you want to read it, you’ll have to traipse on down to your favourite news stand to pick it up.
Many of us in Ottawa are getting edgy, hoping we’ll get snow soon. Without it, I daresay, there will be little to do this winter for those of us who spend time on the ski trails in Gatineau park, skating on the Rideau canal, kite skiing and playing outdoor hockey. Winter without snow around here would be tiresome in the extreme. One can only enjoy so many games of the Settlers of Catan.
I went hiking yesterday reluctantly, wishing I was zipping through the woods on my skis. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find a bit of winter out there. It has been cold enough lately to freeze Lusk falls in Gatineau Park, with the spray and water vapour creating a shock of white ice formations in an otherwise brown and drab forest. I was expecting a lack-luster stroll through the woods but this chance encounter made my afternoon feel like an adventure of sorts. And right about now, I needed that.
Pray for snow.
I am finally getting around to updating this website, including the addition of new galleries. This one, featuring photos from a canoe trip on the Coulonge River in Quebec, is the first, but there will be more so check back again sometime soon.
For twelve bucks you too can have a copy of this Collector’s Edition. It is a wonderful compilation of Canadian wildlife images, spanning a breadth of beasties from the creepy and crawly, to feathery, furry and toothy. However, you’ll also find photos of captive wildlife in the issue, including the cover shot.
If Canadian Geographic insists on including captive animals in their wildlife photo contests and Collector’s Editions, as they currently do, I think they should recognize them as a distinct category – apart from wild-shot images. People pay money to enter these contests on the faint hope that they might win a prize. Apples should at least be judged against apples.
Most published images of cryptic animals like wolves, wolverines, lynx, cougars etc are taken at game farms where people pay money to photograph captive animals. Opinions vary widely on the merits and ethics of these activities, and I won’t go into a long debate about that here. But this much is undeniably true: photographing captive animals is not the same thing as photographing their wild brethren.
Notwithstanding the myriad differences between captive and wild photography, it is decidedly easier to get high quality photos of captive animals than wild ones – especially for things like wolves that are rarely seen.
For me, part of the excitement of real wildlife photography is that there are no guarantees. It can take days or weeks of trying, and countless shots, to get one keeper. By comparison, photographing captive animals is akin to fishing in an aquarium.
Difficulty aside, staring at a grizzly through a fence in a zoo is just not as exciting as watching one splash through a salmon stream in a misty fjord. Nor is a photo of a captive grizzly as interesting as a wild-taken photo. At least, not in my opinion. Looking at the latter makes me feel robbed of the experience I am want from wildlife photos.
When done well, an image of a bear in a stream can pull me into the photographer’s experience, evoking the sensation of being there amongst the ancient cedars – salmon thrashing around my ankles – as the bruin creeps towards the riverbank.
By comparison, imagining somebody snapping photos from behind a fence, or at a game farm with animal handlers all around, leaves much to be desired. I know I am talking subjectively here. I know many will not agree with me. But I don’t believe the essence of wildlife can be found in a zoo, nor the essence of wildlife photography found in captive-made images.
In the 2010 Wildlife Photography Contest, a picture of a captive grizzly bear won the Mammal category. The accompanying caption for that photo on Canadian Geographic’s website says the photographer “tried not to get too close to this eight-year-old resident of Kicking Horse Mountain Resort’s Grizzly Bear Refuge, near Golden, B.C.”
How do you get too close to an animal on the other side of an electrified fence?
Perhaps the editors who wrote the caption did not realize the Kicking Horse Refuge is a captive facility? Or, at worst, they were insinuating that the photo was taken in the wild (I sincerely hope not). Either way, I think the caption is implicit recognition that there is something different about photographing animals in the wild – on their terms – where one has to keep their wits about them and not get too close.
I just got home from a month of guiding and exploring in the Great Bear Rainforest aboard the good sailboats the Island Roamer and Island Odyssey.
We endured some truly harrowing weather this fall with hurricane force winds and near-monsoonal rains. Nonetheless, watching grizzlies and spirit bears devouring salmon, pacific white sided dolphins racing away from transient orcas, humpback whales erupting from the ocean’s skin and so much more, made up for the cold and wet.
After soaking ourselves with rain, we lounged in hot springs, ate fresh seafood and stayed warm with hot tea and good company. It has been nearly a decade that I’ve been guiding on the raincoast and I just cannot seem to get enough of the place. It simply refuses to be anything but epic.
Now that I’m back home I am looking forward to doing some badly needed updates on this neglected blog, including new photos, a new projects page and other neat stuff. So, check back again soon.
A Spirit Bear shaking water from its white coat after a meal of salmon. Photo by Tim Irvin
Since the Queen of the North sank on the central coast of BC in March of 2006, people have been nervous. It was an avoidable accident caused by human error. Remarkably, just two people died. The rest were lucky that the people of Hartley Bay were there to save them.
The ship’s massive hulk is now 1500 feet underwater, still leaking diesel into coastal waters. With that tragedy fresh in people’s mind, the looming threat of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline Project has people on edge.
The proposed pipeline would bring dirty oil from Alberta’s tar sands, to Kittimat where it would be pumped onto large oil tankers that would thread through the archipelago of BC’s Great Bear Rainforest – one of the most spectacular ecosystems anywhere.
Staggeringly, these tankers house two million barrels of oil each, which is ten times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. The navigational hazards for such colossal ships on this stretch of coast are formidable. Even more frightening when one considers that the Queen of the North and the Exon Valdez both went down while making comparatively easy navigational manoevers.
Accidents will happen. And the consequences of a big spill here have unimaginable consequences for coastal ecosystems and people. That is why First Nations and conservationists are vehemently opposing the Northern Gateway project, even while our government and Enbridge are moving forward with this plan.
If you haven’t visited the central coast (and odds are you haven’t – it isn’t easy to get to), then this 40 minute film will give you a taste of the magic of the place and get you up to speed on these issues.
The stories and images in the film are breathtaking. The threats it revels are real, but the film has a hopeful message. The pipeline has not been built, the Great Bear is still oil free, and we have a chance to keep it that way.
Higher quality viewing available here on the website of the International League of Conservation Photographers.
For more on this story, and some gorgeous photos, check out the July 2011 issue of National Geographic.
Paul Nicklin shows off some of his impressive body of work, the unique challenges he faces and why he is obsessed by telling stories from the poles.
One reason I have not been posting much on this blog lately is that I’ve had sporadic internet access while working in the field doing bird and amphibian surveys.
It has been a while since I’ve done some good old fashioned biology fieldwork and it is darn nice to be spending my days outdoors, away from my keyboard. Even nicer on evenings when I get to sit on a beach and eat dinner while the sun sets over Lake Huron.
Great Bear Rainforest RAVE from iLCP on Vimeo.
Recently my old friend Leeyann, whom I had not seen for 10 years, got in touch with me through my website. Besides being a wonderful person, she is a mom these days. It turns out that her two year old son, Thomas, was quite taken with some of the photos on my website, and Leeyann asked if I could send her some prints to hang in his bedroom.
I was tickled happy by this idea. I have published photos in magazines, newspapers, books, reports and calendars, but somehow the thought that a two year old boy and his mom wanted to hang some of my wildlife photos in his room, was just plain delightful.
Thomas picked out a photo of a howling wolf, a grizzly and a spirit bear. I enclosed a short letter with the photos telling him the story behind each picture. It felt so nice – so pure – to be sharing these stories and images with him.
A week later, the following letter came in the mail for me:
Letter from Thomas
This touching and sincere gesture melted my heart instantly. In fact, it is one of the nicest things that has happened since I started sharing my images and stories with people.
Collectively, we share stories with each other in many ways: through music, painting, words, photos and more. And there are a lot of reasons why we do that. One book I read said that the main reasons we tell stories are to entertain, inform, inspire and persuade. This may be true, but I think the essence of sharing stories is something deeper and less tangible. That is, I think we share stories to connect with each other, reinforcing the bonds between humanity, place and the rest of life on Earth. The most meaningful stories are the ones that reinforce these bonds most powerfully.
Using photos and words, it is my wish that the stories I tell will strengthen the bonds between all of us – as Thomas and Leeyan’s kind gesture did for me.
So thank you Thomas and thank you Leeyann. I hope you continue to enjoy the photos and their stories. I know the story of Thomas howling at the wolf image will be with me for a long time.