Holding On, selected in the Top 101 aerial photographs
I am pleased to share that my image "Holding On", taken in East Greenland, has been selected in the Top 101 of the International Aerial Photographer of the Year awards.
The photograph shows a polar bear on a fragment of sea ice, caught from above during one of my expeditions to the Arctic. Greenland's coastline shifts constantly with the season, and the ice a bear stands on one week may be gone the next. From the air, that fragility becomes plain to see, a single animal on a single sheet of ice, with the sea closing in around both.
I will remember this moment for a long time. We watched the bear pause to sniff the air as he walked along the shoreline beside a glacier, clearly catching the scent of something that held his interest. Before long he entered the icy water, swimming and tracking the scent, then climbed onto this iceberg and showed the same sniffing behaviour again. That is the moment captured here.
To maintain a safe and respectful distance, I flew my DJI Mavic 4 Pro drone at high altitude, relying on the zoom lens to bring in the detail. The final frame is also cropped, so the bear was never disturbed.
Greenland remains one of the places I return to whenever I can. The light there has a particular quality, low and long for much of the year, and the ice takes on new forms from one visit to the next. Photographing it from a drone lets me show something of that change, which is harder to capture from a ship or a shoreline.
I am grateful to the judges for including "Holding On" among this year's Top 101, and to everyone who has followed my work in the polar regions. Congratulations to the winners and to all the other photographers named in this year's Top 101. It is a pleasure to see so much thoughtful aerial work recognised alongside my own.
A print of "Holding On" is available through the shop on this site, alongside other images of the same polar bear from Greenland and complementary images from Svalbard and Antarctica.
You can see the full list of selected images on the International Aerial Photographer of the Year website.
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