Top of the World

This image has a rather cool story! Meet ‘Lucy’, my encounter with her was one of the most beautiful wildlife encounters I have had the privilege of experiencing. While working on an assignment in the remote northern Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, we had the incredibly good fortune of spending almost two and a half hours in Lucy’s presence. During our time with her, we got to bear witness to her stalking and hunting two seals (both failed attempts, I was rooting for her) swim, jump from ice floe to ice floe, clean her fur in the snow and an entire stretching routine. She did almost everything except juggle balls of fire! She was likely a bear who was possibly spending her first or second year on her own, after being weaned off her mother. She had such an adorable face and kind looking eyes. She is pictured here, standing on the sea ice before the bow of our vessel as she investigated our presence. 

How I achieved this image was pretty interesting! As soon as Lucy started to approach the bow of our vessel, I knew that this was potentially a moment for a photo I had hoped for, for some time. I had wanted a polar bear to be close enough to the bow of the ship so I could have a bird’s eye view using a fisheye lens. A fisheye lens gives you the curvature you see in the frame and given we were literally near the top of the world a fitting look (and title).

I knew as she approached the ship, I would have to act fast, I had two camera bodies out, both with different focal length telephoto lenses on them. My fisheye lens was in my pocket, so I scrambled to retrieve the lens from my pocket. Successfully changing lenses out, I only had one option for the image I had envisioned.  The easy option of leaning out over the bow was gone. A colleague of mine was already in the position there. I quickly knelt down on the deck and exclaimed to my friend “John, don’t mind me, I am just down here between your legs!” On the bow, right at deck level, there is a small opening or window. I thought to myself, I will just shove the camera out the opening and shoot. One problem, the opening was too small, I couldn’t even fit the camera and lens through! I had to think on my feet, or in this case, on my stomach! I decided to take the lens off my camera body, with my lens in my right hand I stuck it through the opening with the ocean, sea ice and the bear below! With my left hand, I could barely get the camera body to fit through the hole, but it did! I then blindly assembled the lens and body and also blindly, captured the image you see here before your eyes! I was able to get about 5 frames off before Lucy lowered her head and actually settled down for a nap right in front of us.