Alice & Lee {Scarborough Wedding Photography at The Downe Arms in Wykeham}

Neil Jackson July 25, 2014

Great weather, lovely countryside, loads of amazing personal touches and a damn fine bunch of people; all this and more made Alice & Lee's day one to truly remember. Just down the road from us at The Downe Arms, in Wykeham, I had a ball for start to finish! Here's some of my favourites...

Walruses!
Whilst I know Insta loves a frame-filling portrait, I think this is my favourite picture I took of walrus on the trip. We were cruising around the Seven Islands in jaw-dropping conditions (landscapes to come in future posts) - the sea was so still and the light & reflections really dramatic. The call of a walrus sighting came through and I managed to get onto the upper deck and capture a frame of a very brief interaction between them, before they slid away into the water.

There’s just something about walrus! 😂 For an animal that can weigh up to 2 tonnes and have tusks up to 1m long, they are pretty cute. .
One of our last stops of the trip was at a walrus haulout of around 40 males. A bona fide bachelor party! So far on the trip, we’d seen nearly all females, some with calves. Naturally, they were very wary and didn’t hang around for long. This group of males were far too busy sleeping and jostling with each other to be bothered about us!
The haulout was on a large sand bank, which the walrus love, as the sand is a way better surface than ice to exfoliate their huge, blubbery bodies. So there was a lot of rolling and scratching going on.
To get this shot took some patience and some getting wet! Walrus don’t see too well, so we all approached very slowly but made sure to talk loudly, so the walrus knew we were there and that we weren’t a threat to them. Once we were within a safe distance of the main haulout group, we laid down on the beach and I positioned myself right on the shoreline. A small group of males who were in the sea, swam over to check us out. Rather than being in any way scary, being within a few feet of these chaps was just hilarious! They have so much personality and it was such a privilege to be so close to them.

Before I begin to show you a little more of what Svalbard has to offer, I’d just like to share another image of the mother Polar bear and her cub, in a moment of pure contentment. If you’ve read my previous few posts, you’ll know all about how we found these two bears and were allowed a glimpse into their lives, over a couple of unforgettable days.
My wife, Charlotte, chose this one and so it’s a nice way to round off this little chapter. Undoubtedly there will be more bears to come & blogs etc etc but it’s time to give foxes, whales, birds, reindeer and, of course, walrus a look in, plus some of the phenomenal landscapes we seemed to come across around every corner.
Finally, my wedding season continues with an absolute cracker at @wharfedalegrange today. For those of you who follow that side of my work and were wondering what all these bears were doing on my feed in peak wedding season, there will be loads of great weddings to share throughout the next few months too!

Polar bears are unique. Seeing them interact and behave in the very harsh environment they call home, is testament to that fact. No other predator on Earth lives how they do, where they do. Even in the face of climate change, they have proven themselves to be hugely adaptable - the fossil record tells us that they have survived other global warming events in the past, well before humans walked our planet.
Sadly, after surviving all of this, legal hunting quotas seriously threaten their demise - check out @ojlwildphoto and support his Polar Bears And Humans project, it may be their only hope.

When we left our mother & cub the day before, they were a picture of contentment. Full bellies & counting seals (or whatever Polar bears dream of...). After such an incredible encounter with such a relaxed couple of bears, we just had to try to catch up with them again.
When we did eventually find them the next day, they were on a mission. According to some other guides, the mother had been setting a relentless pace for the last four hours and the cub was dead on its paws, having to trudge through quite deep snow. They eventually slowed their pace and we spotted them at some distance away. Adam, our guide, first found the cub sat very, very close to a Ringed seal, hauled out on the ice, next to its breathing hole. Out of nowhere, the mother burst out of the nearby water, nearly catching the seal off guard - could she have been using the cub as a distraction, knowing the seal wouldn’t see it as a threat? Either way, it was behaviour Adam had never seen before and that’s saying something!
After having no success that time, they began navigating the coastal ice flows, before continuing to follow the deeper snow along the shoreline. When I managed to capture this image, the cub was really tired out but there was slowing mother down. As with all large predators, hunting success rates are low - a Polar bears being suggested at round 10%. The next meal and survival is, of course, always never far from the forefront of their minds.

I accidentally (on purpose) forgot to mention, that the female bear I posted about yesterday had a little companion with her! Yep, this little cub definitely captured a few hearts during our two encounters with them...even though for most of the time their face was completely red with seal blood! Just Polar bears doing what Polar bears naturally do 🤷‍♂️.
We found the cub and it’s mother on a seal kill, both sleeping off a recent gorging session. Polar bear mothers with cubs can be very nervous and rightly so. If approached in the wrong way, they can turn tail and run to the horizon in a flash. As Svalbard is so remote, many bears haven’t seen humans before and even more importantly, those that have haven’t always had a positive experience. It was essential that we launched the zodiacs and approached the bears very cautiously, before we could hope to get reasonably close. A short trip to the shore took several hours. Without this expertise from the guides, we would have been flying blind.
As it turned out, we’d been dealt a real stroke of luck because as you can see from the photo, they were as chilled as can be! When they did manage to haul themselves up, they managed about another 10 meters before slumping down for another snooze and this is how we left them. The perfect wildlife encounter and one I won’t be forgetting in a hurry.

These last 10 days in Svalbard have been ones that I will never forget. To visit a true wilderness, spending the majority of our time in places largely uninhabited and unspoilt by man & still mostly governed by their true, natural processes, has been life affirming in so many ways.
Of course the wildlife has been truly spectacular too & because of the skills of our peerless guides, Andy, Adam & Nikita (one of the world’s foremost Polar bear experts), we have had encounters I could never have dreamt of; both surprising & emotional. From Blue whales to, of course, Polar bears, it’s been a trip full of superlatives - so expect a few pictures in the coming days & weeks!
This first image was one I had visualised pretty much as soon as I booked the trip, nearly 2 years ago. When photographing big predators, you are trying to convey their strength, purpose and pure majesty - eye contact, forward motion, a sense of their raw power and aura. Of course, this is much, much more easily said than done. A remarkable amount of work goes into an image like this, before you are afforded the split second opportunity to compose the frame and press the shutter, all whilst bouncing around in a zodiac in the Arctic Ocean!
In truth, whilst of course this female bear is a formidable animal, I leave Svalbard with a much more balanced view of actual Polar bear behaviour and of their very fragile role in this high Arctic wilderness - they are not at all the scary, killer bears some would have you believe - I was much more taken by their quiet, inquisitive nature. Worse still, by the desperate plight they now find themselves in, not just from climate change but from legalised hunting, the vast extent of which is almost totally unreported to the public - bears are killed in huge numbers in Canada & Russia, to feed the fur trade. Spending time with a man like Nikita Ovsyanikov, who has intensively studied Polar bears in their natural habitat for the last 30 years, has been an eye-opener to the stark reality of the current state of the species.
Thankfully people like Nikita, @wildmanrouse & @ojlwildphoto are doing everything they can to raise awareness about the truth about Polar bears.

Late last night, we landed in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, in the High Artic. For the next 10 days, we’ll cruise in search of the sea ice and (fingers crossed) the Polar bears and other natural wonders that call it their home.
Its currently their mid-summer, meaning 24 hour daylight and more chance to find whatever’s out there 🤞.
Needless to say, when I hurriedly snapped this pic on my mobile on the way in, I was well and truly blown away. You don’t get many views like that when your plane lands! 😱🥶

Grace & Colin at @firleplace on Saturday. It was an absolute scorcher of a day, in more ways than one! Preview to come v soon...