SVALBARD IN AUTUMN
A series of images by Stian Klo
A series of images by Stian Klo
The lone traveller.
It's photographed close to the Tunabreen glacier in Svalbard on October 2nd, 2015. It was a transition from autumn to winter time of year, and the temperature dropped dramatically from a day to day basis. Our captain, Silje Marie and her dog, spotted the polar bear from our boat a few hours before sunset. "It's a big male, maybe around 5-600 kilos", she said. We shut down our engines and just drifted around in the icy Sassenfjorden/Tempelfjorden whilst monitoring it's behaviour. It was a bittersweet moment, as it walked tirelessly around looking for food and I can barely even imagine it's struggles. At one point it stopped and looked towards us and started sniffing in the air, before deciding to jump in the ocean - was it going for us, where is it ? Chaos for a few minutes, as our boat was semi-stuck in big pieces of ice and the polar bears are notoriously known for being fast swimmers. Luckily for us, a few minutes later he was back on land again. The last remaining sunset light was disappearing fast, and then it happened - it walked right up in the highlights of the composition I wanted. I could have easily zoomed further in and get more of the details of the actual animal, but I rather wanted to focus on its natural habitat and the surroundings - as I think it's tell a better story.
It's photographed close to the Tunabreen glacier in Svalbard on October 2nd, 2015. It was a transition from autumn to winter time of year, and the temperature dropped dramatically from a day to day basis. Our captain, Silje Marie and her dog, spotted the polar bear from our boat a few hours before sunset. "It's a big male, maybe around 5-600 kilos", she said. We shut down our engines and just drifted around in the icy Sassenfjorden/Tempelfjorden whilst monitoring it's behaviour. It was a bittersweet moment, as it walked tirelessly around looking for food and I can barely even imagine it's struggles. At one point it stopped and looked towards us and started sniffing in the air, before deciding to jump in the ocean - was it going for us, where is it ? Chaos for a few minutes, as our boat was semi-stuck in big pieces of ice and the polar bears are notoriously known for being fast swimmers. Luckily for us, a few minutes later he was back on land again. The last remaining sunset light was disappearing fast, and then it happened - it walked right up in the highlights of the composition I wanted. I could have easily zoomed further in and get more of the details of the actual animal, but I rather wanted to focus on its natural habitat and the surroundings - as I think it's tell a better story.
Winter was creeping down the mountains. We could notice a drastic change in scenery on a daily basis, and the temperature dropped from just hovering above zero degrees Celsius when we arrived, to a cool -16 degrees Celsius in just three days. We were not really prepared for that.
