Over the last few years, I’ve spent each autumn photographing polar bears in northern Canada. The assignment has been to document their journey from ice to land, then back to ice again. This image, taken from a doors-open helicopter in -60c, was taken my final day of the project.
Previous to this, I’d been following this large male for nearly 3 weeks as he tracked up the coastline waiting for big freeze up. Then, following a brutal early winter storm, the ice appeared almost overnight. From land, we watched him through binoculars as he made his first steps onto the floe… and he was gone. The story didn’t end there.
We flew back to Churchill, Manitoba and hired a specialist helicopter to find “our guy”. After signing our lives away, we opened the doors and took off. Within 30 minutes we were out 10km into the floe and there he was, fast asleep at the end of a massive ice floe.
His footsteps snaked across the frozen landscape, symbolic of his lengthy journey to this point. In that moment, the scene struck me on a personal note: never forget how far you've come. From the boy who could've only dreamt of photographing polar bears, to actually doing it.
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Climate change is altering this habitat at an increasingly alarming rate. With freeze
ups occurring later and melts happening earlier, polar bears in this region are hugely under threat. We need to act together or these footsteps will fade, forever.
Through putting "Frozen Footprints" in your collection, you’ll do exactly that. By purchasing this piece, you’ll be contributing to the NFT Conservation Fund. The full details are on my website.
c4rdinal
