Arctic moose – North Norway

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Read the behind the scenes story – audio transcribed:

Oh my goodness. So this encounter with this Arctic moose is one I will never forget, because it’s probably the most poorly dressed I’ve ever been, shooting in the Arctic because moments before we encountered them, I’d been snorkelling and I’d taken my 7mm freedive suit with me, and I was absolutely desperate to get to clear sea. We have very chalky, cloudy sea around Kent, so I can’t snorkel with ease from where I live, and I knew the sea would be really clear there.

So I’d taken everything with me on this trip and got a little window to get in. I’d been snorkelling for about half an hour, 45 minutes, and we were only about five minutes away from where we’re staying. So once I got out, I literally just chucked my dry robe on and I’d stripped down, nothing under the dry robe, hat on, Crocs on into the car to drive home. And as we were driving along the road, I suddenly spotted what I thought was a horse to start with. I was like, oh, are there some horses in the birch there..?

And then as we moved a little bit closer, I was like, oh my gosh, it’s the moose again. So that was the second encounter which I will come back to in just a moment. The first encounter we had, we’d just got in from a big hike and where we were staying is on, like erm, it was on a horseshoe sort of beach, which was tidal, obviously. And the water didn’t really kind of increase much in height, but it would come in, go out, and then everything on the shore would freeze. And then as the tide came back in again under the sea ice, it was then pushed up under the sea ice and, it would all start to move around a little bit. And we were looking out and it was a beautiful, clear, sunny evening.

The sun was just setting and suddenly I was like, oh my goodness, look, look, look, there’s moose out on the sea ice. And we hadn’t seen them approach and we’d all been looking out, over the view. And there was a mother leading two juveniles out onto the sea ice, and she’d actually got into quite a precarious position. So after the initial excitement of realising we’d seen, or we were looking at moose, we then had quite a deep concern for where they were going to end up because, we could see she’d sense that she was in danger, but she managed to navigate them back to shore, and, they got into some woodland, and they were just sat on the edge of this sort of copse of birch trees.

So we were able to watch them through my long lens and through the binoculars but it wasn’t easy to photograph them. it wasn’t, you know, they were, they were quite a distance away, maybe 500 to 700 metres away, if not more. So they weren’t close enough to kind of get the shot I would love to have got to and have had that closer encounter.

So when we’re driving along the road, bearing in mind it’s -15° and there was quite a bit of wind chill as well. I was, oh my goodness, stop the car and started to reverse it back down the road.

We’re on quite a long stretch of road, very straight, and it’s a really quiet area that we were staying in. So we, I managed, to get back because when you’re shooting in nature, it’s really important to stay inside the car. Your car is like a hide, so animals can’t really sense or see what’s going on inside of cars, vehicles, hide sheds wherever it is you’re observing them from. But as soon as you move outside or you know if you stuck your phone or your camera out of the window, they would sense that. And that could then disturb them, or cause them alarm. So it’s always good to keep everything inside the car.

So knowing this, but knowing my cameras in the boot, I had to do something about that. So we reverse back quite a distance and there’s me, literally dry robe, hat and Crocs shimmying down the side of the car, trying to stay within, like the height line of the car so that they wouldn’t see me. I’m six foot, so that’s quite a challenge, especially on really icy, slippery roads when you’re wearing partially wet Crocs. It was just like, ridiculous.

I managed to get my camera bag, got in the car, we drove back down. Mark was in the passenger seat so he opened his window and we managed to get some shots. I say we, I managed to get some shots of them, but again, it was quite difficult to navigate and kind of compose the shots from inside the car. Leaning over a passenger, and, the kind of the way the birch trees were lined up, they were very much in between the branches. So two of them were sat down as well. One was stood, and we took some shots and I said, I think that’s probably all we’re going to get today, and we’re right on the end. It was almost kind of dusk, beyond settings that I would normally use, to get a photograph of them in this sort of situation.

So, I started to drive away, and then I clocked in my rearview mirror. The one that was stood was from the other direction, looking down this gap in the line of these trees. And so I reversed back a little bit, and I decided that I was just going to try and get the shot because it was the setup was I was a lot closer. It was maybe 15 metres away, maximum but it was over a fence and through some trees. And so I knew I had some time to react to watch its behaviour and make sure that my getting out of the car didn’t cause any alarm or concern.

So as I got out checked, it was watching me, but it had been watching us as we were driving by anyway. And I just shot some images over the, the car roof from my side, and it was just looking straight at me, as you can see in this picture. And it was utterly unbelievable. And I also find it really quite hilarious that I am stood there in nothing else but my dry robe, hat and Crocs in -15° having the most incredible encounter with this incredible animal.

I think one of the things that also really, bubbles up in these moments is that your, there’s a stillness to it. Like there’s the kind of the heart racing adrenaline of the fact that you are being honoured with this amazing encounter with this incredible animal but there’s also this, I feel almost there’s this like stillness, transcend, this slow motion kind of feeling. Because I know that I need to hold my breath, because I know that I’m pushing my camera settings beyond any level of kind of acceptable settings, normally to try and get this kind of thing, I guess and I was shooting it handheld.

I had my 600mm lens, which is a really big zoom and as I was taking the shots, I was shooting at a shutter speed that was so slow for the, the situation, normally you would want to have a shutter speed of at least one over 1250 and particularly when you’re holding things handheld and the animal might move, you know, the faster the shutter speed, the better the sharper the outcome of the image will be. I was shooting one over 200, so as I was then breathing out, I’d be holding my breath and then taking the shots just to bring in a little bit more stability.

I was just so over the moon that it all paid off and all came together and, was able to, to capture this moment with this incredible being.