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Yesterday our expedition group arrived in the small Inuit town of Iqaluit in the far north of Canada; a journey of approximately three and a half hours flight time from Ottawa. Our plan was to continue our flights north early today to Arctic Bay, Resolute, and then finally Grise Fiord, the jumping-off point for our expedition. However, as is typical of Arctic expeditions in winter, the weather has thrown a spanner in the works and we are currently delayed in Iqaluit while we wait for the weather to improve. We are re-scheduled for tomorrow and weather permitting will continue our travels north tomorrow. Temperatures here are currently hovering around -32º Celsius. With three flights still to go, we are expecting the mercury to drop even lower as we continue north…

Earlier today I arrived in Ottawa, Canada via Vancouver. My flight out of Sydney Australia was delayed nearly four hours, but thankfully this had no impact on my ongoing connections. The day after tomorrow, the expedition team and I will be heading to Iqaluit (where we will have to overnight) and then onward to Arctic Bay, Resolute, and finally Grise fiord. From Grise fiord, we will overnight for final preparations before we head out on snowmobiles into the wilderness in search of wildlife.

I do want to take a moment and acknowledge one member of our expedition team who has had to make the very difficult decision to cancel their flights just 24 hours before their departure due to COVID symptoms and close contact exposure. You will be missed and we will most definitely have you firmly in mind as we make our way out into the wilderness.

This will be my last post until we return from Ellesmere Island. See you on the other side.

The seven days I have had at home (on return from Finland) to catch up have quickly come and gone and in a few moments (as soon as I finish this post) I am going to make my way to the airport for the long-haul international flights to Canada. And, of course, yet another round of COVID testing and international travel declarations. Canada is not the easiest country to negotiate with its confusing and somewhat convoluted entry requirements. Everything from a compulsory dedicated ‘Canada Entry’ App for smartphones to the possibility of random testing (which must be pre-booked) on arrival makes for an entry process that seems on the surface far more complicated than it needs to be. It is definitely a first-world problem, but international travel was certainly significantly easier to facilitate pre-pandemic – enough said.

My flight schedule to Ellesmere will be the longest on record for me, eclipsing even the many flights to the remote Emperor Penguin colony out on the sea ice at Gould Bay, in Antarctica. The schedule for Ellesmere: Melbourne to Sydney, Syndey to Vancouver, Vancouver to Ottawa. From Ottawa, life gets more complicated with ever-smaller planes from Ottawa to Iqaluit, Iqaluit to Arctic Bay, Arctic Bay to Resolute, and then finally a small twin-otter from Resolute to Grise fiord and Ellesmere Island. That’s seven flights just to reach the starting point for our expedition to find and photograph the elusive white Arctic wolf.

From Grise Fiord we will take snowmobiles and sleds north toward the remote weather station, Eureka, in search of the White Wolf, Arctic Hare, Polar Bear, Arctic Fox, Musk Ox, and Snowy Owl. How far we get, and where we establish our basecamp will depend greatly on what we find and the prevailing weather conditions. This is very much an expedition, and weather and conditions will dictate the ultimate progress and success of the trip.

There will be no updates from Ellesmere Island whilst I am away as once we leave Grise Fiord on our snow mobiles we will have no internet or communications outside of the emergency satellite phones we are taking with us.

Once we finish in Ellesmere Island I will return to Vancouver (via the same return flights) for onward travel to Oslo, Norway via London and finally Svalbard for my Svalbard Return of the Light Expedition. This expedition was originally scheduled to run in 2020, but was delayed until 2021 and then until 2022 because of the ongoing pandemic. Now, with restrictions sufficiently eased, we can finally go ahead with the expedition. I always look forward to Svalbard at this time of year; the light and conditions are truly inspiring. Before we board our boat and head north from the small town of Longyearbyen, I will guide a four-day private snowmobile expedition out to the frozen sea ice of Monbukta in search of both wildlife and landscape opportunities.

From Svalbard, I will return to Australia for a month’s rest before heading to Africa for my Zululand, South Africa workshop. Given the luggage for these extreme winter expeditions, I am very much looking forward to lightweight packing for the heat of Africa! There are a couple of places available on this trip so if you are keen to photograph African wildlife from a ground-level hide please drop me an email to register your interest. As usual, first in best dressed.

In total, this trip away including Ellesmere Island and Svalbard will include nineteen separate flights across a six-and-a-half-week period. With the Iceland and Finland winter trips already complete (eleven flights), this will see my current flight count for 2022 rising to thirty by the end of the first quarter of 2022. Living in Melbourne, Australia comes with a lot of benefits, but short flights and nearby destinations are not amongst them. We are indeed a very long way from the rest of the world!

Of course, I hope to squeeze in a couple of podcasts between Ellesmere Island and Svalbard and will do my best to post blog updates when possible.

See you in Ellesmere Island in a few days!

I have just published Episode #40 of my Wild Nature Photography Podcast. This podcast episode includes details of my packing and travel preparations for the upcoming expedition to Ellesmere Island and Svalbard and the earlier than anticipated transition story from Canon EOS 1DX MK3 DSLR cameras to the full mirrorless RF System with Canon EOS R3 cameras.

In mid-February of 2022, I ran a winter wildlife workshop in the northern region of Finland. This is the second workshop I have led into Finland in winter that has been dedicated to wildlife. In my experience, Finland is one of the most underrated destinations for wildlife photography and offers everything from Wolves, Wolverine, Pine Martin, Eagles, Owls, and a plethora of wonderful small Arctic birds. Winter can throw up its challenges including freezing cold weather, but for the photographer willing to get out of their comfort zone, the rewards can be really fantastic. Winter paints a stunning white canvas in Finland in February. The Taiga forest is frozen and frequently draped in snow and the opportunities for minimalist emotive photography abound.

The first part of the workshop was focused on Wolves and Wolverines and saw us based close to the small town of Kuhmo near the Russian border where there are a number of photographic hides positioned in the demilitarised no man’s land region. These are the very same hides I use on my Autumn workshops to Finland (Read last year’s Trip Report) and are exceptionally well-positioned for photographers looking to capture wildlife photographs of these elusive species. Conditions for this period of time were exceptional with a fantastic covering of snow and soft overcast conditions. On several of the days, we had heavy snow and dramatic spindrift. At this time of year, there is sufficient daylight to shoot from roughly 8am until 5pm. Typically we were in the hides by 7am and departed not earlier than 5pm; giving us the maximum amount of time for photography and encounters. Although we were skunked on wolves this year (there were a lot of prints in the area), we did have a fantastic encounter with a young Wolverine that provided some exceptional photographic opportunities in the heavy snow. Both Golden and White Tailed eagles also visited on frequent occasions.

From our private cabins near Kuhmo we traveled roughly four and a half hours to the municipality of Kuusamo where we spent our time in the nearby Oulanka National Park photographing Golden Eagle, Green and Black Spotted Woodpeckers and many of the smaller birds including Siberian jays, Siberian tits, Greater tits, and Crested tits. Conditions were similar to our time near Kuhmo with excellent snow cover and photographic conditions were superb. We had fabulous encounters with a pair of Golden Eagles on both days in the hide.

On our last day, we took the opportunity to photograph Dippers nearby to our accommodation before we wrapped up our winter workshop with onward flights home. This particular image of a dipper was captured at just 1/5th of a second in order to blur the water around the small bird.

This was the second outing where I have had a chance to use the new Canon EOS R3 in winter. Like my experience in the prior Iceland expedition (Read the Trip Report), the R3 proved a stellar performer with outstanding battery life and truly incredible autofocus.  As I noted in my Arctic Fox expedition report, the addition of black-out free shooting is a godsend for wildlife photographers and the R3 has now most defiantly found a permanent home as my number one camera of choice. Quite honestly, if you had suggested to me twelve months ago that a mirrorless camera would supplant my EOS 1DX MK3 cameras I would have probably laughed. Nevertheless, there is no question in my own mind at this point that the benefits of the mirrorless R3 outweigh the few cons in comparison to professional DSLR cameras.

Participants shot both Sony and Canon (no Nikon this time). Cameras included the Sony A1, Sony A7RIV, Canon EOS R5, and Canon EOS R3. We typically photographed with telephoto lenses ranging from 400mm and the way to 600mm.

Due to my limited time in the studio in Australia (before I leave for Ellesmere Island in just three days) I have only had time to edit and process a few images from this workshop but will update this post later this year once I have had more time to go through the photographs from this trip.