Other than the more informative posts I’ve got planned, I also want to share my personal experiences from the field as well. These might be specific stories behind a single image or stories covering a whole shoot, and I’ll be posting these each month. Today, I want to share with you one of my favourite wildlife encounters so far; photographing brown bears in the Finnish wilderness on the day of the first snow of the winter.

I had first been in Tenerife for freediving training while my partner had driven from our home in the Netherlands to Finland to help my mother with training some horses. Afterwards, I flew up to Finland as well. We would head north for a few days with the family, before driving back home together. We happened to be heading into a region where I had already previously successfully photographed bears, and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and try my luck with my camera. Although it was already October, and therefore the chances of the bears still being awake were a lot slimmer, I got in touch with the owner of the hides I had previously used. I knew that the chances were I would end up spending hours in a cold hide for nothing. Still, the slight possibility of seeing one while being surrounded by the fall colours was all I needed to make up my mind.

When the day that I had booked the hide for arrived, the weather forecast was promising snow. While this raised some concern over the road conditions and my safety in my family members, it made me even more eager to get out there. I was now picturing the king of the forest surrounded by the fall colours and slowly falling snowflakes, and despite the odds, I actually felt optimistic. After turning on my location sharing with my partner, I left my family grilling sausages by the fire and took off on a couple of hours of driving deeper into the wilderness.

By the time I got to the hide, the temperature had dropped some more and snow had started falling. I settled down, got my gear ready and started waiting. The owner of the hide was staying at another hide nearby, and he would come and get me after dark. We had briefly discussed the bad berry season that year, and how although sightings were getting rarer, some might still be out looking for food before hibernation. I was carefully scanning my surroundings while listening to the quiet forest and hoping for the best. And then, just as I was about to grab my thermos, I noticed something move deeper in the woods. I grabbed my camera and looked through the viewfinder to get a better look. There was a bear there. And it was getting closer!

I forgot all about the cold and carefully started to snap away with my camera. Over the next few hours, several bears would come and go, searching through the berry bushes. Some would just quickly pass by, and others would stick around for a little longer. The snow kept falling, covering the darkening forest in a white blanket. I kept shooting until it got too dark. Then I just watched and waited for the last bear to disappear before I started packing away my things, not worrying about keeping quiet anymore. As I was zipping up my camera bag, the owner of the hide showed up as well, and we made our way out of the forest together, snow crunching underneath our boots as we chatted. It turned out I had indeed gotten lucky. While I had been pretty much surrounded, he hadn’t seen any activity. I got back to my car with a massive smile on my face, brushed the snow off of it and started driving back to meet my family for a late dinner. My stubbornness had paid off, and I had gotten much more than what I had initially hoped for.