PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
Brian Hammond | Just Chilling

Name: Brian Hammond
Picture title: Just Chilling
Category: People’s Choice
Nationality: United Kingdom
Occupation: I am retired. I  have photographed from my teens and more seriously after studying photography as part of my Fine Art course at University.  Followed by a career in IT.  After retiring ten years ago, I have travelled extensively primarily to arctic and subarctic regions for wildlife photography.

Technical information
Camera: Canon R5 
Lens: Canon EF 500mm ii F4
EXIF: F4, Sutter speed 2500, ISO 800
Accessories: –

Brian Hammond says:

I had travelled to Svalbard seven years previously, but wanted to return with better equipment and on a much smaller vessel, finally doing so last year. 

We had enjoyed a few polar bear sightings, some at a considerable distance while exploring the archipelego, but on the penultimate day in the North of the islands, we came across this female who had located a Walrus carcass on the rocky shoreline. She had obviously  been there with it for sometime by the size of her distended belly, and the marks in the snow. 

We then watched her repeat a cycle of sleeping in a snow hole she had dug above the shoreline, emerging to stretch, before then  making her way down to eat her fill of the carcass. She would look up from time to time, with her head and chest smothered in blood. It was very difficult to find an clear angle and frame a compositon, as the carcass was nestled amongst large rocks and the idling Zodiac was being tossed in up and down in the offshore swell, often causing the images to be clipped, or have the horizon at a very extreme angles.  However, once repleat, she would briefly wade into the sea to wash the worst of the blood from her coat, before returning to the snow slopes above the carcass to snow bathe. Here she would snow plough, roll and toboggan, in order to return her coat to its pristine condition, which she could achieve surprising quickly. She would then return to her snow hole and sleep, repeating the process several hours later.

This snow bathing and later play, presented the best opportunity to photograph her, but when we first found her the light was poor, and from our lower angle on the sea she was  often partly obscured by the largest rocks.  Returning later in the evening, we found her higher on the slopes, clear of all obstruction, just playing in the snow as she was already spotlessly clean. Over the course of the next twenty minutes we watched as she  snow ploughed, slid down the slopes, rolled or just lay on her back chilling out in sun before we left her to her evening, and this is when this image was taken.