Photography Expedition to Svalbard

I'm a landscape photographer, and for as long as I can remember, I've dreamed about visiting the polar north, in particular Svalbard, with its incredible landscapes and phenomenal wildlife. In 2018, I visited with Morten Hilmer, but the trip was well and truly scuppered by bad weather, which more or less left us stranded in Longyearbyen. In 2020, I was due to sail around Spitsbergen, but yeah, 2020. I then tried again in 2022, but due to unforeseen circumstances, I was not able to attend. And then, in March 23, I got an email from my good friend Brendan, asking if I would charter a boat with him and sail around Spitsbergen in search of landscapes and polar bears. But there was a catch. The ship would set sail in early June, which would give us only three months to put together a trip. We took a gamble, put the trip together, and the photography gods were well and truly on our side as we experienced an unforgettable journey full of incredible highs. Mind is being blown and everywhere you look there are images. Oh my God. This is just non-stop excitement, two bears running across the ice, actually at one point walking towards us. But of course there were also low points on this trip. It's bad. Basically, last night at some point, the engine stopped. This might be the end of the trip, after only four days of sailing. Are we rolling? Yeah. Yeah, it's miserable. Miserable location. Of all the photography expeditions I have ever undertaken, this one presented the most challenges but also offered the most opportunities. This is photographing Svalbard. Before we all begin to board the ship, I just want to let you know that today's video is sponsored by Squarespace. Once I had made the horribly awkward introduction and all of the jokes about mine and Brendan's matching camera bags had been made, it was time to set sail and what a beautiful sailing day it was with calm winds and almost perfect reflections. All right, welcome everybody to the first outing on the ship here in Svalbard. It's day one. We've just left Longyearbyen. Well, we say just left, about six hours ago we left Longyearbyen. It's now, can you believe it, midnight and I've got something really interesting, cool to show you. Just behind me. It's probably not going to come. You're not going to see it in that shot. I was throwing some b-roll. We have a parahelic circle, which is this crazy light show and what's really exciting about this is I have the Nikon 14-24mm lens and we have glass-like water, so I'm able to photograph the parahelic circle with the 14mm with this beautiful calm water. Most people are in bed. There's a few of us kicking around. It's just phenomenal, man. I can't believe it's midnight. I can't believe we're in Svalbard and, yeah, quite an interesting shot for, I suppose, what is my first image of the trip. It's going to be a great trip. This is probably a good time for me to mention that I took so many images on this trip that it's not possible for me to show them all within the context of this video and, of course, not all of them were captured whilst I was recording, so make sure you stick around to the very end to see the full slideshow of all my images captured from this trip to Svalbard. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the first full day here on the boat on this Svalbard cruise. The way in which the photography works on a trip like this takes some getting used to. Each day, we would aim to take two Zodiac cruises. That's a nice bag you have there, Brendan. Sometimes we would stay in the Zodiac, cruise around looking for wildlife and any areas of interest. The expedition team were fantastic and would happily oblige anyone who wanted to check out possible compositions, even macro bubbles in ice. So we are now positioning the boat strategically around floating ice. Forget the mountains, forget the wildlife, it's all about a tiny piece of ice beneath the boat. This is so much fun. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I find it fascinating how much texture, colour, and abstract patterns can be found in ice. But not all of the photography was done from the Zodiacs. Sometimes we would make landings, which were great, however, Svalbard is a dangerous place and carries a constant risk of polar bear attack, so whenever on land, we had to set an armed perimeter, which made searching for compositions tricky, but not impossible. I'll go 24mm, and long exposure, black and white, minimal, minimal, oh, pardon. So even though we have bright blue skies and harsh sunlight, with the use of a 10-stop filter and a black and white conversion, and good composition, you can create some quite meaningful stuff. So that's what we're doing. And I think, that is a, still a 10-stop, that is a 10-stop. Problem is, I have 10-stop glasses on, so I can't see anything. So I'm just including a tonne of sky, there's nothing in the sky, but all that does is bring emphasis on the contrast, which is the Jaggedy Mountains, and we'll go 10-stop filter, just to totally kill the water dead. Well, I might not have completely killed the water dead, but I did make the right choice by going for a black and white on this incredibly high contrast, blue sky day. Almost perfect conditions for black and white photography. Perfect to neck. So if you look, we're throwing some b-roll, but if you look towards the sun, all of the mountains on the other side of the fjord are retracting all of this cloud, and it's fantastic, so it's a beautiful cloud on these mountains, and then we have these small islands, these rocks kind of scattered towards the mountains, so although it's quite chaotic, it's, there is a path through the islands leading to the mountains, and the whole scene looks, just looks, they're basically the complete opposite of what I've just shot, but yeah, hopefully just as nice of an image. And what focal length? Focal? Oh, I don't know. 40mm. 40mm? Yeah. So that very softly spoken Irishman who caught me out with my focal lengths is Neil. Neil's a great photographer and a great filmmaker, so I'd encourage you to go and check him out on Instagram. He helped out a lot with filming on this trip. He also did a front flip off a Zodiac into minus 1 degree Celsius water, but we'll get on to that later on. Now Zodiacs are great for photography, and apparently doing front flips off, but for me, some of the best photography was actually from the ship itself. There were no polar bears to worry about, and we had ample space, and the surrounding scenery was constantly changing, which would offer new photo opportunities every 15 minutes. So it's currently dinner time, and we're all supposed to be sat down, eating dinner, but as these things are, as soon as it's the most awkward time, the best scene presents itself. And thank you very much sir. So we're all trying to grab a shot, and we're going to be well overexposed, bear with me. Yeah, we've all come out to take this shot, because it's absolutely beautiful, finally we have some cloud, and some atmosphere. I tell you what, I'll take this weather. So I've had blue skies for days, and it's been torturing me, and now we have this, which is exactly what I was hoping for, shooting from the boat, epic conditions, and yeah, easily the best image of the trip, and it's all spontaneous, and hopefully there'll be more of this going forward, and I'm very happy, very happy. Keep up the wise. Yeah, love you. So whilst we're still out at sea, I thought I'd give you a tour of the ship, show you our accommodations, and what's on board. I mean, it's very rugged, I'm not sure how much it's changed since it was built in the 80s, but anyway, let me show you the highlights, shall we say, the highlights of the ship. The ship that we're sailing on is the Polar Pioneer, which was built in Finland for the Russians in 1982. Now what's great about this ship is that it has an ice class of 1a super, which basically means this has a strengthened hull and can get itself through some incredibly thick ice, which pays dividends later in the trip. So this is my room, we have a couple of bunk beds, a little wardrobe, my desk, which is just pure chaos, and then we have a lovely view out of the window, which, yeah, is, it's still got some, yeah, quite nice views every now and then. In here is my bathroom, which is okay, to be honest, and there's even a shower in here. There we go. Down here is the expedition lounge. This is where all of the lectures happen, which I believe there's one going on now. It's also where we all drink our beer in the evening, okay, so I don't want to disturb them too much. I suppose there's a lecture about glaciers going on. Let's go down the stairs. This is where we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'm doing a walking talk around the ship. Where's the gym? Oh, this is Neil. Hi, Neil. How's it going? Neil's helping with the video, he's also doing, hang on, maybe this is more appropriate. Neil's helping with the video, he's also doing photography stuff, helping with the clients, helping with their photography. All around good workhorse. Is replacing Greg Snell. Uh-oh, don't say that. Sorry. All right, so here we have the gym. I didn't know that there was a gym on the boat, which is kind of cool. Hello, everybody. All right, so there is a bit of a drill when it comes to getting off the ship. It's not as straightforward as I hoped it would be. So in order to get into the Zodiacs, everybody must be wearing waterproof trousers. The next thing that you have to wear when getting off the boat into a Zodiac is a pair of wellies. And that's, yeah, because when you get out of the Zodiac, you've got to basically walk through a few inches, maybe up to a foot of water. Third and final thing that you have to do is put this on. But of course, I'm going to need a jacket before I put this on, otherwise I'll freeze to death. I am now ready to get onto a Zodiac. Three days in and the trip had been off to a fantastic start, but as the skies darkened, so did our fortune. There are many myths and superstitions whilst at sea that can bring bad luck upon a ship. For example, no whistling, no bananas on board, no women on board, and never clink your glasses when drinking. And I can't help but wonder if breaking all of these taboos may have changed our luck. You see, initially, we were supposed to be heading south east to this area, but the bad weather came in, forcing us to retreat north and making the next photography shoot very difficult. But the challenging photography conditions were just the beginning of our problems. Did you do your X-Pen? No, too wet and snowy. Are we rolling? Yep. Yeah, it's miserable. Miserable location. Apart from 30 seconds where the clouds parted, the mountain ridges showed themselves, there was a bit of light, and from two hours of being wet, cold, and miserable, one image was captured. And it was probably my favourite image of the day by far. It's right on screen now. I didn't film it, because it was too cold and miserable to film. I just thought this was a waste of a trip, but it turns out to be brilliant, so there you go. Opportunistic photography at its finest. I do really like this image, and it's one of my favourites of the trip so far, but getting it was a real endurance challenge, and it was the first time on this trip that I had felt as if the photography was not there. We were struggling, we were wet, and we were cold, and yes, we were very lucky to get that 30 second window of light, but I sensed the mood amongst the group begin to dip, and that was not helped by what happened next on the ship. Well, good morning everybody. It is the morning of day five, and we've just woken up to an early announcement at about six o'clock, saying that the engines have failed, and we've had to return back to Longyearbyen. This is not good news. So we've had engine problems, it wasn't safe to continue. Right now we should be waking up in the far north, approaching the pack ice, but instead we're waking up in Longyearbyen. We're going to have a briefing in about two hours. So, at this stage, well, I don't think anybody knows what's going to happen, but we'll keep our fingers crossed that it's an easy problem, maybe spend a few hours, get it fixed, continue on. But the reality is, this might be the end of the trip, after only four days of sailing. So, I don't know, we'll see what happens. It's not good. It's bad, basically last night at some point the engine stopped, and he was saying that if we were in a storm it would be like a chance of total loss of control of the ship. So it's super dangerous, but the big problem is, there's no engineers in town. So they're having to try to find one to fly in from either Tromsø or Oslo. Best case scenario, we leave the next day, but there's a good chance that even that third day, which would be the twelfth, we're still stuck here. So as you can see behind me, that is Longyearbyen. Not ideal, but it's kind of what can you do in these situations. We had the briefing today from the expedition leaders and the ship's captain. The good news is that today's Saturday and we do have an engineer coming out. So with a bit of luck, we'll have the problem sorted and maybe tomorrow we will be back on our way north. So we might be stranded in Longyearbyen for the time being, but that doesn't mean we're short of adventures, because, yeah, we're doing a Zodiac tour. This is where we'll find the bear. We'll travel the entire of the island and there'll be one walking down Main Street. We're going to discover the local gems of Longyearbyen. And I'm confident, determined, shall we say, to make an image from this boat trip. Well, I'm going to be honest with you. When you go on a polar expedition to Svalbard, this location isn't exactly what one might picture in their mind's eye, shall we say. Muddy, close to town, about as far away from a polar wilderness as you can imagine, and all around uninspiring. However, despite this, everybody's spirits were high and everybody was determined to make an image, which just goes to show that there are photographs everywhere. So we're walking back to the boats after a nice walk, but not necessarily the best photography location and just spotted this stretch of river that seems to be alive, because there are thousands of bubbles and some green colour and this 24-70 seems to focus from inches away, so it's almost macro. So we're all taking advantage and getting excited about the bubbles. Nothing wrong with that. Look behind me, there. They are raising the anchor, which is fantastic news. The engineer has come, he's on board, he's done some tests. We are going to start sailing north and as we sail north we're going to continue to do tests, but the good news is the engineer is going to stay with us and all being well, the tests are fine and we continue, we push north into the pack ice. We're going to go full beans now, so I feel like everything up to now has just been an appetizer and what's about to come is going to be the main course. Fingers crossed anyway, no more problems, flipping heck. After what had been a long 24 hours, I went to bed with an element of uncertainty, worried that we would wake up once again in Longyearbyen, but I am happy to report that we woke up to one of the most breathtaking sights I have ever seen in my life. So this is a class 1A icebreaker ship, I believe. Don't quote me on that. Now, I have broke out the 14-24, so I can capture, hang on, bear with me, I've got to see this, it's unreal. There we go, so how good does that look? So I've got the 14mm, I'm literally hanging very carefully, hanging over the side of the ship, photographing ice pack with mountainous glacial backdrops. Man, it's a lot of fun. First experience, brand new experience and I love it. And everyone, there's people scattered all over the ship having a great time. Now this is what I had in mind when setting off on a photography expedition around Svalbard. I feel like this is a great time to say a massive thank you to Pete, one of the expedition team members who had the appropriate drone licenses and was able to fly and capture some of this incredible footage and generously allowed me to use it in this video, adding so much value. So please check the link in the description below for Pete's Instagram and let me tell you this, his wildlife photography is incredible. I've been dreaming about being here right now for about five years in amongst the pack ice, surrounded by beautiful mountains and wildlife and I'm so happy to finally be here. But it's not all about photography. I have another responsibility. I'm also on polar bear watch along with about seven other people. So with a bit of luck, we might just spot one. I've seen seals, I've seen bear prints in the snow on the icebergs, but no bears as of yet. And to be honest, it does kind of feel like looking for a needle in a haystack, but I don't know. I'm keeping my hopes up. So just a heads up. I've just been told we have a PB situation. By this chap. It's all on you now. Not me. It's all the bridge. I didn't see them yet. Okay. So apparently they're really far away, but let's go see. This could be it. Put it into crop factor to see them. So I see two there. Wow, I can actually see them. I can see its face. All right. Update on the bear situation. Definitely three bears. Very, very far away. One of them is eating, probably a seal, but they are really far away. So I got a little bit of video footage, which I'll overlay now, which was kind of cool. And I did take a couple of shots, but I think we have, I don't know if we can get any closer because they're on the fast ice and it's illegal for us to break through the fast ice. It's a very tough call, but I think I'm going to go to bed. And it's very, very difficult for me to leave behind this beautiful, beautiful environment. But it'll still be here when I wake up in a few hours. And with fingers crossed, better luck. The polar bears will also be closer. So we might very well get a wake up call in the middle of the night saying the bears are coming closer. And they have a kill. I don't think they're going anywhere. So I think we're going to set up camp here and just keep eyes on them probably for the next day or so. It's very exciting. But for now, let's go to bed. Well, good morning, everybody. We're on the move. Not very far, but hopefully closer to the polar bears. Go and have a look. Thank you very much. Thank you. The tension on the ship is palpable. I think we were at about three megapixels per bear before. I think we're up to eight now. So we're getting closer. This is just nonstop excitement. Two bears running across the ice. Actually, at one point, walking towards us. And they're the closest they've been. And they're actually getting some really nice images, minimalist landscape images. Legitimately, a photograph I would go for regardless. It's not just doing it because they're far away. Environmental landscapes. Environmental portrait. Environmental wildlife shots. That's what we call them. Man, they look great. Super happy right now. Really happy. Yeah, it's great. And everyone's just... Everyone's on high spirits, running around. There's no tension. No one's jostling for space. There's plenty of space. It's not really a busy ship at all. Good number of people. Yeah, very happy. As I just mentioned, this is the type of wildlife photograph that I would go for regardless if the bear is close or not. I think including the environment can be a very powerful asset. But what happened next absolutely blew my mind. All right, it's the moment I've been dreading the most. Or maybe I've been looking forward to it, I don't know. But we are at 80 degrees north. And we're doing a polar plunge. I do enjoy a bit of cold water swimming, but I have to tell you, this will be the coldest. All good fun. And nothing to do with photography. But when you're having an experience like this, you've just got to do these things. And I think you'll regret it if you don't. You're Swedish, so this is just a daily routine for you. Yeah, you would say that, but I live in Ecuador. This is the first time I've seen you with no clothes on. Or no hat, probably. He looks way older. How much older do I look without a hat? He looks way older. I think I look prettier. The worrying thing for me is that everybody just seems so good at this. No reaction. Hardcore, man. I'm going to struggle. First up to the platform we have Jonas Perel with a classic Swedish dive there. No problems here for the big Swede who makes a calm and collected exit. Next up, Brendan Van Son with what looks like a bomb but turned into some sort of Buddha pose. Yeah, I felt a lack of commitment to that bomb. Rewind the tape and his face says it all. Next up is yours truly opting for the same technique as Brendan. But can we execute it with more height and more tuckage? Oh, that was an excellent performance. But my exit was disappointing with a certain loss of control as I scramble to get out of the minus one degree Celsius water. Finally, we have Neil Arthurs here. Not quite sure what he's going to do as he's not able to access the platform. Oh, wait, what's this? Neil Arthurs has done a front flip off the bow of the Zodiac. This is incredible and by far the best entry into the water that we have seen. And look at this, floating on his back, cool as a cucumber. Neil Arthurs wins the polar plunge competition. Oh, yes. Now, I thought the polar bears would mark the end of the trip and thus the end of the video. But my gosh, was I wrong because we have so much more to come, including some of the best landscape photography I've had in a long time and the mighty walrus. Are we doing this now? Are you recording? I'm recording. I'm trying to look cool on video. I have to say, this is by far the most insane and most productive Zodiac cruise we've done on this whole trip. I've taken about 500 photographs, so has everyone in here. We've been scrambling around each other, sharing compositions. It's just mind is being blown and everywhere you look there are images and no exaggeration, everywhere. What's going on? What's going on now? Oh, my God. Look there. Wow. It's a water cascade. I love it. Now, there's no getting around it. This was a sloppy location. Man, talk about thick, wet mud. But I guess that's what the walrus love and they position themselves beautifully in front of this mountainous backdrop with a glacier. Now, if you thought that our encounter with the polar bear and the walrus was special, well, I'm going to save the best until last. We have about at least 50 belugas surrounding the waters. The purest vault of beluga whales. There's several hundred. Thank you. Well, we are sailing back to Longyearbyen. It's going to be a 14-hour journey. I think it's going to be a bit rough. So, I am not looking forward to that. Now, if you've enjoyed this video, we're probably going to do this trip again next year on the same ship. So, if you want to know, if you want information about that, sign up for the newsletter. I'm sure we'll announce something, although nothing has been confirmed. And stick around just for another minute or so, because I'm going to show all the images from this trip, more than what you've seen so far in this video. Because, yeah, it's been a fruitful trip. But finally, I'd just like to thank today's sponsor, which is Squarespace. Now, if you don't know who Squarespace are, they're an all-in-one website building platform. So, as a photographer, you're going to want your own website with your own domain, a nice online gallery, maybe an online store to sell your prints or books or calendars or anything like that. Well, you can do it all through Squarespace. It's dead easy. You manage it all yourself. Use their intuitive drag-and-drop system, beautiful templates, and you'll have a professional-looking website in no time at all. It's so easy. Anyone can do it. They've got 24-7 customer care. But, as I say in more or less every Squarespace-sponsored video, if you get stuck, go on YouTube. There's a ton of resources on YouTube. And within no time, you'll knock out a professional-looking website. So, go to squarespace.com forward slash heat and you'll get a free try. And if you like free trial, use the offer code HEATON for 10% off your first purchase. I'm freezing and I'm done, man. It's been a long trip. So, enjoy these images from what has been a trip that's been a long time coming. Yeah. Awesome. See you next time, guys. Cheers. Bye-bye. I hope you enjoyed this week's video. On my website, I have two books available for purchase. And I'll leave links in the description below. Thank you for watching and I will see you all, hopefully, next week.