Photo Safaris By Region AFRICA - Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya - Namibia—Land of the Himba - Cape Town—Photo Tour for Women ANTARCTICA - Ultimate Antarctica ASIA - Angkor Wat & Bagan - China's Winter Tigers & Giant Pandas - Japan's Winter Wildlife - India—The Palace on Wheels - Snow Monkeys & Giant Pandas - Essential China—Iconic Landmarks & Landscapes - Great Rivers & Mountains of China & Tibet - Mongolia—The Golden Eagle Festival EUROPE - Britain's Winter Birdlife - Eclectic Holland - Wildlife of Hungary & Transylvania - Transylvania—Romania of Myth & Legend - Venice - Tuscany - Turkey—Continental Crossroads - Provence - Spitsbergen—The Pack Ice Voyage - Ultimate Puffins - Albania, Macedonia & Montenegro NORTH AMERICA - Ultimate Wolves - Ultimate Yellowstone - Horses & Icons of the Wild West in Winter - Nature & Digital Photo Seminars with John Shaw - Monument Valley & Slot Canyons - Great Smoky Mountains - Grand Canyon at Havasu Falls - Predatory Animals of North America - Action & Adventure Sports - Humpback Whales of Alaska's Inside Passage - Glacier National Park Field Workshop - Denali National Park in Autumn - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Autumn - South Dakota Wildlife—Bison Roundup & Mount Rushmore - World's Best Raptor Shoot - Nova Scotia—Photo Tour for Women PACIFICA - Papua New Guinea SOUTH & CENTRAL AMERICA - Patagonia' Mountain Landscapes - Baja California—Whales, Wildlife & Wilderness - Easter Island & Machu Picchu - Mexico's Colonial Heartland Photo Safaris By Date JANUARY - Ultimate Antarctica - Ultimate Wolves - Ultimate Yellowstone - Angkor Wat & Bagan - Britain's Winter Birdlife FEBRUARY - China's Winter Tigers & Giant Pandas - Horses & Icons of the Wild West in Winter - Nature & Digital Photo Seminars with John Shaw - Japan's Winter Wildlife MARCH - Baja California—Whales, Wildlife & Wilderness - Monument Valley & Slot Canyons - India—The Palace on Wheels APRIL - Nature & Digital Photo Seminar with John Shaw - Patagonia' Mountain Landscapes - Eclectic Holland - Great Smoky Mountains - Wildlife of Hungary & Transylvania MAY - Grand Canyon at Havasu Falls - Transylvania—Romania of Myth & Legend - Venice - Tuscany - Turkey—Continental Crossroads - Snow Monkeys & Giant Pandas JUNE - Predatory Animals of North America in Spring - Action & Adventure Sports - Essential China—Iconic Landmarks & Landscapes - Provence JULY - Spitsbergen—The Pack Ice Voyage - Ultimate Puffins AUGUST - Humpback Whales of Alaska's Inside Passage - Glacier National Park Field Workshop - Denali National Park in Autumn SEPTEMBER - Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Autumn - Great Rivers & Mountains of China & Tibet - Albania, Macedonia & Montenegro - Namibia—Land of the Himba - Mongolia—The Golden Eagle Festival - Predatory Animals of North America in Autumn - South Dakota Wildlife—Bison Roundup & Mount Rushmore OCTOBER - Papua New Guinea - World's Best Raptor Shoot - Nova Scotia—Photo Tour for Women - Nature & Digital Photo Seminars with John Shaw - Easter Island & Machu Picchu - Mexico's Colonial Heartland NOVEMBER - Wet & Wild—Andean Condors and Iquazú Falls DECEMBER - No tours scheduled for December 2008 JANUARY 2009 - Cape Town—Photo Tour for Women

		Ultimate Antarctica February 2–March 1, 2006 Spring Fever in Galapagos April 29–May 15, 2006 Polar Bears & Wildlife of Spitsbergen June 26–July 8, 2006 Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya September 8–22, 2006 Emperor Penguins of Snow Hill Island, Antarctica October 19–November 3, 2006 and October 31–November 15, 2006 It was a perfect February day. Two inches of fresh snow had fallen overnight, the sky was cobalt blue, and the temperature was -25 degrees F. We had gotten up at sunrise and were cruising a remote road in northern Saskatchewan searching for wolves. As we rounded a corner, a red fox was hunting in the ditch beside the road. I slowed down to watch the animal in the glow of the morning sunshine, and a moment later, I was in the ditch. The fox was long gone, and our Jeep was buried up to its axles in hard-packed snow. Aubrey is a much better shoveller than I am, so I suggested that she demonstrate her prowess while I captured our predicament on film. We knew there would be no vehicle along to rescue us, so it was a great relief when two hours later we finally spun our way free, ready to tackle more of the adventures of winter photography. Photographing in winter The coats of all northern mammals are most luxuriant in winter. We captured this handsome red fox in February in northern Saskatchewan with a Nikkor 600mm f/5.6 lens on Fujichrome Velvia film. presents a number of challenges beyond keeping your vehicle on the roadway and learning to wield a snow shovel. One of the biggest problems is extreme cold (the kind of cold that freezes any future chances you ever had of conceiving children) and how it affects your camera, your batteries and you. Every article you've ever read on winter photography gives advice on the proper clothing that someone should wear to stay warm in the outdoors. Beyond dressing in layers, we recommend that you never mousse your hair and then wear a wool cap, and always cut holes in your pant pockets in case you need to warm your hands quickly. As well, don't worry too much if you freeze a toe, that's why the Lord gave you ten of them. Your hands are probably the hardest part of your body to keep warm when you are photographing in winter. Neither of us can operate a camera with big bulky mitts, so we wear a light pair of gloves (silk or polypropylene) inside our mitts. Lately, we've used disposable handwarmers and keep one of these in each mitt. The hand warmers generate heat for several hours and warm your hands quickly so you can enjoy the pain of thawing fingers that much sooner. Still, silk gloves and handwarmers are a temporary solution, and if you work in cold weather for any length of time, expect to get numb fingers. Wool gloves are the warmest handgear you can wear, but wool fabrics shed fibers that can get lodged inside your camera when you change film. Wayne has a whole roll of snowy owl shots with a dark wool fiber growing out of the bird's head. Anyone who would like to buy a print of this innovative photo technique can contact us by e-mail. It was -25 degrees F when we took this shot of a gray jay. The bird's feathers were fluffed up to insulate it against the cold. Nikon F5 camera, a Nikkor 500mm f/4 lens and Fujichrome Velvia film. Twenty-five years ago the serious outdoor photographer had to winterize his/her cameras. That meant dismantling the shutter, the film transport mechanism, and the diaphragm on all your lenses and replacing the thin, warm-weather lubricant with one that would not thicken in extreme cold. Today, camera manufacturers use all-weather lubricants of Teflon and silicone and it's no longer necessary to winterize any of your photographic equipment. A big problem in winter photography is moisture. When you first step outside, your camera is warm. Falling snow melts on contact, and can wet your equipment. You can avoid this by pre-cooling your gear. We often put our camera bags in our Jeep the night before an outing. Once your camera is cold, snowflakes bounce right off. If you accidentally drop your camera into the snow, or you notice dust on the lens, whisk it off with a lens brush. Don't try to blow it clean with your warm breath or else you'll frost up your equipment. Having said that, we sometimes intentionally breathe on the front of a lens to produce a thin layer of frost that functions like a soft-tone filter and gives photographs a dreamy, foggy feel about them. You'll need to practice this technique since there is a fine line between a photo that is artsy and one that belongs in the garbage. The sun broke through the clouds for only a moment transforming the ice patterns on this taiga lake in northern Manitoba into patterns of silver. The photo was made with a Nikon FM2, a Nikkor 28mm lens and Kodachrome 64 film. Condensation also forms on your camera (inside and out) the moment you step into a warm room after having been in the cold outdoors. This is particularly worrisome with the new electronic cameras in which the delicate circuitry is vulnerable to moisture. One solution is to seal your equipment inside a large plastic garbage bag while you're still outside in the cold. Then, the condensation forms on the outside of the plastic bag and not on your equipment. You can take the gear out of the bag once it is warmed to room temperature. To be honest, we don't do this anymore and we've had no problems with our equipment or with moisture forming on the film, but it's always a possibility. In the freezing cold, the most vulnerable part of your photo gear is not the $8,000 super telephoto you're hauling around, or that state-of-the-art $2,500 camera body, but the four dollar set of batteries that powers everything. In low temperatures, the power output and life span of batteries are greatly reduced. If you don't use your camera often, it's probably a good idea to start the winter season with a fresh set of batteries rather than chugging along on partially depleted ones. As in everything, you get what you pay for, and the cheapest batteries (usually zinc-carbon cells) often cannot accommodate the energy drain imposed by photographic equipment in cold weather. Alkaline batteries are better, but even these only perform well down to about -4 degrees F. The best cold-weather batteries are lithium or rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries (called nicads), both of which work well in low temperatures. When shooting in cold weather both of us keep an extra clip of fresh batteries inside our parka. As soon as the batteries inside the camera get cold and slow down, we replace them quickly with the warm ones, and stow the chilled ones inside our The musk ox has been a logo on Wayne's business card since he began freelancing over 20 years ago. In 1995, he camped for two weeks in the Canadian Arctic in early April to capture these impressive animals in a winter setting. The photograph was taken with a Nikon FM2 manual camera, a Nikkor 600mm f/5.6 lens and Fujichrome Provia film. coats to use again later. During the 80s and early 90s, Wayne led dozens of photo safaris to photograph polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba. A recurrent problem among the participants was their cameras dying in the cold weather. Nothing is more frustrating than having a pair of adult male polar bears wrestling 100 feet away and being unable to capture the moment on film because your camera batteries just died. Once the temperature dips below -30 degrees F, no camera battery works well, so if you are one of the hardy few tromping about in such weather, you'll need to keep your camera partially warmed inside your parka. Canon and Nikon also make external battery packs that attach to the camera by a length of cable. In theory, the battery pack is kept warm inside your coat and your camera keeps on working. An even bigger problem than dead batteries, in such frigid temperatures, is brittle film. All film can break when it is frozen, especially if your camera has a motor drive that advances the film quickly. When we work in very cold weather we switch to manual cameras without an attached motor drive. In this way, we don't rely on batteries to power the shutter, and we advance the film slowly, by hand, so that it doesn't break. The light meter, however, in every camera is powered by batteries and once the temperature plummets low enough to kill the batteries, we must use a hand-held light meter to determine our exposures. Static electricity is one final hazard you may encounter in very cold weather, especially when the air is dry. This usually happens when you use a motor drive to advance the film and the fast movement of the film causes a spark to In the midst of winter when temperatures are coldest, porcupines leave their dens in midday to take advantage of the meager warmth of the sunlight. We spotted this one beside the road, feeding on rose hips that were sticking above the snow. By staying quiet and moving slowly, we were able to observe and photograph the animal for over 30 minutes. Nikon F5 camera, Nikkor 600mm f/5.6 lens, and Fujichrome Velvia film. discharge, leaving a "spider" on your film. Thankfully, this has never happened to us, primarily because we advance the film slowly by hand, but it is still a possibility even when you are careful. Living in Alberta, we get six months of winter every year, and we actually like the winter. It's an invigorating season in which to photograph, and when the temperature is well below freezing we're sure there will be no one else around. On top of that, magazine and calendar editors always tell us that they love to see winter shots; anything with snow in it. So if you crave to be published, forget about Arizona or the Florida Everglades and head to the winter woods of Minnesota, Maine or Montana. We've left the most serious advice until last. Winter stresses wildlife. Deep snow makes movements more difficult, food is often scarce and low in quality, and cold temperatures can slowly drain an animal's dwindling energy reserves. With all of these challenges to face, the last thing that wildlife needs in winter is harassment from a photographer. Unknowingly, you may compromise an animal's survival when you flush it from a sheltered resting spot, force it to divert its course through rougher, more demanding terrain, or exclude it from a vital feeding area by your presence. There are more of us plodding through the woods today than ever before. Let's walk as softly as possible, especially in winter, so that the nature we love will not be spoiled by our zeal. Questions and Answers Wayne Lynch and Aubrey Lang will occasionally answer readers' questions in their bi-monthly column. They can be contacted via e-mail at this address: lynchandlang@photosafaris.com. Due to the anticipated volume of inquiries, Wayne and Aubrey cannot answer questions individually.

	Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. P.O. Box 655, Vashon Island, Washington USA 98070 Phone: (206) 463-5383   Fax: (206) 463-5484    Email: info@photosafaris.com Copyright © 2008, Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc.