SVALBARD Photo Adventure – PART 2 | wildlife photography behind the scenes
Look at this, look at this… It has been snowing during the night,
and I had my D 850 outside making a time lapse before it started snowing. I
brought two power banks for charging batteries and I have this external power bank
for powering up the D 850 so for the D 850 it's fine, I have enough
batteries for the rest of today. The other batteries I charged last night
so I have enough for another full day, maybe a little more. But, there's really
thick, heavy clouds and even with my big solar charger it's not easy to
charge anything in this weather and I'm using a lot of power! I'm using power for the
laptop, I'm using power for the batteries, I'm using it for the microphone,
I'm using it for emptying the cards onto the computer, I'm using it for my safety equipment, like my In Reach.
I'm using it for my phone that controls the
panhead, the panhead on the time lapses, so I really, really hope that
it will clear up during the day, or at least a little tomorrow, so I can get
everything recharged. Everything is still working, I'm just feeling that I'm a little challenged about the
battery thing. I haven't even got my morning coffee. I've been out looking at
the time-lapse, checking the bear alarm, seeing if I could see any tracks, emptying the time lapses from yesterday onto the computer, but now it is
time for coffee. First cup of coffee, awesome! It has been pouring down outside, it's
still raining a little bit. I got all the equipment ready, but now I have taken
it in again because everything just gets soaked! I'm really eager to get
out because I have seen a reindeer out there and I have seen, on my walk
yesterday, the little fox but it was around five hundred meters away and
just escaped.
So yeah, there are some birds out there, some shorebirds, and
them just want to get out of photograph them. It's a little frustrating to
sit here in Svalbard, in the little tent, when it's so nice outside,
and it's raining and raining and raining. I hope it will stop a
little bit so that I can get out and photograph without everything
getting totally soaked. I'm a little afraid because I've had some rain
damage with some of my equipment, and it is too early on this trip to get
more of that, so I am sparing it. So, I'm spending the time eating my late
lunch, recharging some more batteries, the phone, the In Reach again and
having a cup of coffee. Then I hope the rain will stop.
It's still very cloudy but it has
stopped raining and I hope to be able to just get a little bit of power
to my batteries and my other stuff. So what I've done now is I've put the big
solar panel here. This is one of the good things about having them a little
too large because even on a cloudy day they will produce something,
and I think now they are getting around two, two and a half watt to each
power bank and hopefully that's enough to fill them so they can
charge one, maybe two, batteries this evening. At least it's better than
nothing. Now I just need to get the tent a little better set up, so that if
it starts to be windy it'll be fine when I'm gone. After
that, it's time to go out with the camera. Finally, the weather is dry again and
hopefully we can get some photos of the reindeer that is walking over there
somewhere. Look what I found on my trip
yesterday from the reindeer.
Here in Svalbard, if they're on a, what do you say,
on a skull, you're not allowed to take them, but when they're like this, I can
bring them. So now, I just need to figure out if they will fit into
my backpack when I'm going home! Are they not nice? Look at this! They're not from the same reindeer, but they
really must have been a big deer. Look! Yeah, going home on my wall! So, I just tried to get the drone up but it
started raining immediately, so I thought, now I want to focus on the
most important thing while I still have some good light and no wind and
everything is beautiful. I want to see if I can find that reindeer
that I saw yesterday. I saw it in the hills not far from the camp. It
has been raining all day but look at this now, it is beautiful.
If I can find
that fellow it would be awesome! He didn't look that shy. I was
just out on a walk and he just looked at me and walked around eating, so
hopefully! If I'm not finding him, or if I find him and photograph him and want to move
on, there are a lot of terns or something, and gulls
flying around down there in huge numbers and it could be fun to go down and
actually I see if I can get anything there. Let me see if I can find that deer. It
seems like it's left the island, which is not possible. It must be here
somewhere! Somewhere! Let's go and check it out. So, I've seen the deer, the reindeer.
It's sitting in the hills over there, far away, looking at me actually. Let me show you a picture. There it is. From this distance the
background is really nice, with these snow-covered mountains. Let's see what
happens if we can get a little bit closer. The good thing about the reindeer here in Svalbard, is that they are not shy.
At least, most of the time, I think they are
not shy. I'm definitely not an expert on wildlife up here. I have photographed here so
little. But yeah, let's see if that one is willing to stay a little bit
when I get closer. I got him up here and, he's hiding
behind the hills, but he's not afraid of me at all. Not shy like the red deer back
in Denmark where we have to sneak around and wear 3d camouflage. This guy is
totally confident, I don't know why. I'll see if I can move position because
I'm really badly placed here.
This is different than it used to be.
Here it's me moving away from the deer. I just walked around ten metres away from
him. Why did I only bring the 600 millimeter!? There's some birds down there.
It's so nice with the reindeer! He's eating. He's eating, and then sometimes
he looks up at me. He doesn't care if I talk apparently. He just looks up though. What a beautiful reindeer. Imagine being
stuck out on this island. He's just here and he has to wait until the ice before
he can get back. I don't think he swim that far.
That was nice.
Now he's just walking away down there. Actually, towards my photo bag. What's going
to happen? I don't follow him. Now
he's apparently going away and I don't want to just follow in his tracks. Now
he can have some peace and I'll go home to the camp, maybe go down to the shore
and see if I can photographs any birds and then, yeah, I think I'll call
it an evening, and get ready for tomorrow. That was nice!
