How I Shoot on Expedition | Svalbard

Welcome to the west side of Svalbard, currently on a sailing expedition. I wanted to take you guys on a little bit of a journey into my photography process. The things that I pack, the things that I consider when composing images, and how to best portray this incredible landscape that surrounds us. I'm not gonna lie, there are times where it's kind of stressful, like it's it's so beautiful, it's almost too beautiful, and you often feel you can't do it justice, but with the blend of creative editing and really putting time into photography composition when you're out in the field, maximizing your raw photos, you can get pretty close to that. I've got a very nice headpiece on for our zodiac ride. It's a very delicate balance of wearing too much and getting really hot when you get dressed and then coming out and you get freezing cold. It is now three in the morning and we are making a bit of an ocean crossing into a different fjord and I woke up to the sound of many plates rattling around in the kitchen. The waves got pretty big and I thought after many trips of not getting out of bed and documenting it that I really needed to get up. So we're currently sailing between two fjord systems and I want to take you through the gear that I brought with me on this trip. The main wildlife lens, usually we need to go the longest we can, so I have the 500 f4 from Sigma, which in the wildlife lens world this was the one I could afford, and I have a 2x converter on the R5, which has been just a staple setup for all wildlife photography here with the polar bears especially. The 100-500 from Canon, which goes on the R5C and is a great lens for landscape photography, shooting distant mountains, bursts of light, also wildlife and filming wildlife. The 28-70mm, such a beast and it's like having every prime lens packed into one at f2. 70-200mm f2.8, classic lens. In addition to the R5C, I like to bring with me this beast, the Ronin 4D, which has changed filmmaking for me. It is such an incredible tool, I mean Svalbard looks insane with this setup. Out on a little morning stroll on the sea ice today. It's very nice, we're in Belsund, one of my favorite fjords. Edges are all dangerous and why? Because you can't tell exactly what's in there 10 meters, that's right. We decided to jump on land and stretch our legs, did a big scout for bears of course, nothing in the area and in the process we walked over to this amazing little hut where I've just learned that two people spent two years in a row living here just off the grid over the pandemic. I think that is truly an admirable feat. When I think about how to compose my images on land and from the zodiac, I'm always thinking about the diversity of the sequence in video and the compositions that I can capture in a short time, especially in events where I have a very unique moment in front of me, something unfolding and I have to think quick. For me it's always about getting wide shots, getting tight shots and how I do that is by usually having two cameras on hand. On this trip that has been the 500mm f4 and then on the second body the 70-200 and usually that combination has given me the ability to tell a greater story in these unique moments that we're experiencing and often for print that leads me to have a wonderful chance of creating a series, a group of three images of the same thing in the same stylized way that tell this unified story. Good morning from the north of Svalbard. Last night we went out to sea along the sea ice edge and we scouted and scouted and scouted for many hours and saw almost zero wildlife. It was kind of just an abandoned ice abyss out there, so we've turned back. We're now in the north of the archipelago again and we've seen just endless walrus. I feel like this trip has been a walrus photography mission and it makes me think about wildlife composition and how the repetition of seeing these different animals time and time again on this trip has been a bit of an art of varying what I'm getting from those moments. I'm really in a walrus composition and on the back of this ship we can get almost to water level and I feel like it creates the strongest connection to you and the wildlife you're capturing. The images that I'm most connected to already from this trip are those low tight compositions really focusing in on the walrus because it's been endless walrus and if you look at the difference in getting top down angles from bottom up angles it really changes the emotion that you're capturing in the subject. So I really like that straight eye to eye level and often really just from the ground as low as possible looking straight out. I feel like that's created the most captivating images so far. you