Arctic B/W

I love shooting landscapes in black and white, especially the arctic landscape of Svalbard. The cliffs, rocky shores and the light up here is almost screaming for a b/w shot. I was talking to a friend of mine about b/w photography and he was wondering wether I was shooting with my camera set on greyscale, but I don´t. I always shoot in color, but sometimes I am already planning to convert the images into black and white while I shoot. One of the advantages about thinking b/w is that you will be able to expose differently, focusing on contrast and shape, rather then thinking about getting detail in the shades.

Here are some of my black and whites from my latest trip around Svalbard. Hope you enjoy them.

PS! These look great on the wall as fine art prints and on canvas.

Arctic light

One of the reasons I decided to go to Svalbard at the beginning of September was the beautiful light at this time. The birds are mostly gone from their nesting grounds, but the landscape is even more stunning than in the middle of summer. On this trip we had a lot of heavy clouds following us, as well as strong winds from the northeast. However, every now and then the light appeared and gave us brilliant photo opportunities.

At a couple of occasions we were lucky enough to have Blue Whales close to the boat in good light. They were circling around as they were checking us out for quit some time. September is a good time for whales, but this was even better than I was hoping for :-)

All of these images were shot from the boat, either using a Redged tripod or handheld. Being able to use high ISO values with the D3S made it possible to take images I could not take before. The image below was taken at 00:30 AM using ISO2000 with the 70-200VRII hand held. It is razor sharp and noise level is more than acceptable :-)

Arctic dream

Arctic Skua, Stercorarius parasiticus

I just returned from an amazing trip to the Arctic. It was a boat cruise with M/S Stockholm, organized by my good friend and collegue Ole Jørgen Liodden. We arrived a couple of days early in Longyearbyen and spent the first two days photographing the arctic landscape and wildlife in autumn colours. Finding wildlife in this area might seem easy in the summer, but we had to struggle to get what we wanted. In the end however, I was quit pleased with some images of Arctic Fox, Svalbard Ptarmigan, Arctic Skua and the some landscape shots.

Arctic Fox, Alopex lagopus, and Svalbard Poppy

Svalbard Ptarmigan, Lagopus muta hyperborea

Autumn landscape on Spitsbergen

Autumn landscape in Adventsdalen, Spitsbergen

Barnacle Geese, Branta leucopsis

Of course the big question always is; "did you see any Polar Bears?" - YES!

During our 7 day trip we saw an amazing 17 Polar Bears, and several of them were very approachable. At an old whale carcass we had five bears at the same time, showing all sorts of stunning behaviour. We got diving bears, feeding bears, hunting bears and a lot more. We even saw behaviour previously not recorded when a bear attacked a Gull on the water by diving underneath it. More on this later!

Meanwhile I will share some shots with you showing some of the bears we met. Hope you enjoy them.