Lord Of The Arctic

Already on the second day of our Svalbard tour, we encountered our first bears. First we saw a beautiful, and very relaxed female that came very close to our ship, and a few hours later we saw this magnificent male. It was more shy than the female, so it kept its distance, but it was still close enough for us to get a good look and some great photographs.

When your subject is as pretty and impressive as a polar bear, it's easy to be tempted to shoot everything very tight to show as much as possible of this amazing creature. However, it's the stunning scenery that makes this place to special, and in my opinion so much better than most of the other places where you can photograph polar bears. I therefore decided to not use my 600/4.0 and just shoot with my 200-400/4.0 to show more of the environment - the layers in particular. I selected this image for the nice reflection and the leg position.