{"id":2061,"date":"2011-01-25T12:13:33","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T01:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/?p=2061"},"modified":"2012-03-21T09:33:46","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T22:33:46","slug":"the-polar-bears-of-the-high-arctic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/nature\/the-polar-bears-of-the-high-arctic\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographing the polar bears of the High Arctic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/p>\n

A polar bear from the archipelago of Svarlbard. Image: Emma Rowan-Kelly<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

How do you photograph a polar bear? By travelling to the icy Arctic Circle.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sydney-based Emma Rowan-Kelly travelled to the to capture images of the icy landscape and its endangered inhabitants. “I was taken with the fact that this archipelago in the Arctic Circle had a polar bear population 3 times that of humans and it was all due to the harshness of the environment, combined with that it never had an indigenous human population.”\u009d<\/p>\n

One of Rowan-Kelly’s goals was to create a strong connection of the polar bear’s link to humans. “People are aware that polar bears are in real trouble, the scientists are warning us there is a risk of them becoming extinct.”\u009d<\/p>\n

“I don’t want them to become some “\u02dcmythical’ creature when we can do something to prevent that happening. So as an artist I wanted to focus on a positive delivery of the message, these beings are wonderful, get to know them, care about them.”\u009d<\/p>\n

So how do you get a photo of one of these bears, while keeping a safe distance? “I took a long zoom lens and stayed down at their eye level or even lower.”\u009d<\/p>\n

“Shooting from a Zodiac is perfect as it is a safe way to get quite close to the bears without encroaching on their territory. It helps to have a great spotter to find them from a distance- “\u02dca creamy spot in the snow’- and if you are lucky you get a bow bear – which is a curious bear who approaches right up to where the ship is in the ice and looks for a way to get in to the strange large metal iceberg that smells of food.”\u009d<\/p>\n

An exhibition of Rowan-Kelly’s work from her trip, “\u02dcInnocent Arctic’, is showing from 22 February until March 5, 2011, at the Depot II Gallery. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you photograph a polar bear? By travelling to the icy Arctic Circle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,56,45,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-conservation","category-environment","category-nature"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2061"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2069,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061\/revisions\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}