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Finally winter is ending and spring sends its first messengers. It was interesting how the birds started to be really active last week when temperatures reached up to 18° Celsius. We now have the first snowdrops blooming. It‘s beautiful.

These last winters we just had one or two days where it was really romantic with a thick layer of snow even covering the trees.

For this photo I once hiked into my backcountry and stayed in a bivouac through the night, to be able to capture the winter landscapes in the morning. All night long a gusty wind blew the snow into my sleeping bag at temperatures of around -12° Celsius. It’s wasn’t a comfy night.

But in nature it almost seems a rule that a certain level of discomfort needs to be embraced when you want to capture something that intrigues you. Interesting enough - at least in my opinion - the reward of the experience and the intensity of the moment almost always outweighs the difficulties. Even if your mission doesn‘t succeed.

Finally winter is ending and spring sends its first messengers. It was interesting how the birds started to be really active last week when temperatures reached up to 18° Celsius. We now have the first snowdrops blooming. It‘s beautiful.

These last winters we just had one or two days where it was really romantic with a thick layer of snow even covering the trees.

For this photo I once hiked into my backcountry and stayed in a bivouac through the night, to be able to capture the winter landscapes in the morning. All night long a gusty wind blew the snow into my sleeping bag at temperatures of around -12° Celsius. It’s wasn’t a comfy night.

But in nature it almost seems a rule that a certain level of discomfort needs to be embraced when you want to capture something that intrigues you. Interesting enough - at least in my opinion - the reward of the experience and the intensity of the moment almost always outweighs the difficulties. Even if your mission doesn‘t succeed.

When I was young wildlife filmmaker Jeff Turner made me dream of the Canadian wilderness.

In 2004 he released a documentary shot in the remote Barren Lands. A film about the timeless interconnection of wolves and caribou. It was called “The endless Dance“.

The Barren Lands are home to the Bathurst herd which in 1986 reached the staggering number of 470.000 individuals. Since then the herd had been in a constant decline. Last summer another photocensus was done and the results were unsettling: Only 3609 caribous were left. That’s almost a 99% population drop.

We don’t even know the reason why this herd is fading away. But while there is no penny left for studying nature, we’re investing hundreds of billions into the research of AI, weapons and consumer goods. We travel the world like there’s no tomorrow, but we can’t spend a dime on protecting what’s left of the wild.

The decline of the Bathurst herd is happening more or less unnoticed. What strikes me is that it’s only 20 years ago that someone like Jeff Turner thought, he made a film about something that would go on forever.

And so, we are probably very close to a moment in time, where some wolves in the far country of the Barren Lands will head out to search for caribou, just like they did for millennia. It will take them a long time to find one. When they finally succeed, a rather sad event will take place, one that Jeff Tuner did not expect to happen:

The last dance.

Memories of winter

All photos are from the same day. Captured in the Canadian Arctic. March 2018.

I checked my journal. The thermometer showed -42°C when we left our base. We stayed in the field for 11 hours.

It was the only moment where I snapped a few pics of a wolf (we called this curious individual Scruffy). The rest of the six-week-shoot I was only filming.

All photos were captured on a Nikon D700. It was a work horse camera I used for ten years or so. The camera coped well with the freezing conditions. The same counts for the ARRI Alexa Mini, which I used to film the actual arctic wolf sequence.

Memories of winter

All photos are from the same day. Captured in the Canadian Arctic. March 2018.

I checked my journal. The thermometer showed -42°C when we left our base. We stayed in the field for 11 hours.

It was the only moment where I snapped a few pics of a wolf (we called this curious individual Scruffy). The rest of the six-week-shoot I was only filming.

All photos were captured on a Nikon D700. It was a work horse camera I used for ten years or so. The camera coped well with the freezing conditions. The same counts for the ARRI Alexa Mini, which I used to film the actual arctic wolf sequence.

Memories of winter

All photos are from the same day. Captured in the Canadian Arctic. March 2018.

I checked my journal. The thermometer showed -42°C when we left our base. We stayed in the field for 11 hours.

It was the only moment where I snapped a few pics of a wolf (we called this curious individual Scruffy). The rest of the six-week-shoot I was only filming.

All photos were captured on a Nikon D700. It was a work horse camera I used for ten years or so. The camera coped well with the freezing conditions. The same counts for the ARRI Alexa Mini, which I used to film the actual arctic wolf sequence.

Memories of Alaska

Even before I fell in love with the photography of Michio Hoshino, I was dreaming of the big caribou herds in Alaska. In 2022 I got incredibly lucky and was allowed to follow the caribou migration for about a month for the BBC. I was in the field with my good friend @polvorosa_kline who I’ve worked with for the first time in 2011. It was so good to be on this challenging endeavour with him. We needed strong nerves to cover the entire sequence in only a few weeks.

I have a little background info for the last wildlife nerds among you, who still love to look into the history of things: Michio Hoshino had a story about the Porcupine herd in the Geo Magazine Special “Alaska” in October 1995. In the article it says it’s a herd of 180.000 caribous. Unfortunately the last photocensus in 2025 came to the conclusion that it shrank to 143.000 animals.

It has been a growth and decline for the Porcupine herd since the census started in 1979. There were only 106.000 animals counted in the late 70s. But then in 2017 the herd peaked at 218.000 individuals.

Considering how many other species have rapidly declined in the last 40 years, I think we can still be more than hopeful for the Porcupine herd.

Memories of winter

Canadian Arctic, 2018.

30 days out of 6 weeks under -40 degrees Celsius. Filming arctic wolves in winter was tough. It wouldn’t have been possible without the weather station we were based at. I heard that this arctic outpost doesn‘t cooperate anymore with film crews and photographers. It makes me a little sad, but I‘m so thankful that we were allowedto stay there.

Memories of winter

Polar bear tracks. Svalbard 2023.

I‘ve spent a total of one year on Svalbard mainly filming polar bears and arctic foxes.

Captured on a Fuji X-S10.

The photo from this post is the first medium format photograph I‘m sharing. It has been captured in 6x7 on Portra 400.

A note about a spiritual nature experience.

The other day I was talking to a friend who I was working with on a story about the caribou migration in Arctic Alaska. We were reminiscing a huge caribou accumulation at the end of the shoot. It must have been two hundred thousand or so.

It was a giant stream of animals flowing through the vast tundra. Everything in motion. No pausing. Just quick grazing and browsing like they were in a hurry.

Soon I was completely surrounded by caribous and they were passing by just meters away. But the herd was also covering entire tundra hills in the distance. Caribous everywhere. It was frantic, epic, intimate.

I was in the middle of an untamed natural force realising that something started to happen inside of me:

I was connecting.

A deep feeling began to form. As if I was becoming one with the world. A spiritual experience.

When the herd had left, it was completely silent. Even the mosquitos were gone. But I was fulfilled.

I’m convinced there exists a forgotten bond between us and the natural world. Everything is connected in deeper ways than we might think. My caribou moment made me very aware of that.

(The photo wasn’t taken on the same shoot.)

It was a rather cold and windy evening in early spring when the sunset bathed these hills in red, pink and orange.

The black grouse had begun their beautiful and atmospheric courtship already and so I tried to be in the backcountry as much as possible.

Captured on Kodak film.

This is a photo from one of the largest king penguin colonies on Earth.

There are still a few last places left that burst of life. These places remind me of how amazing this planet could be if us humans hadn't occupied and altered almost every centimeter.

If this planet was still largely alive I'm sure kids wouldn't sit at home playing computer but be outside enjoying the excitement that comes from being surrounded by wildlife and a diverse flora. Or have you ever seen a child that wasn't excited to see a fox, bear or deer? Or who didn't make a bouquet from beautiful flowers growing around them?

Anyways in Antarctica I once had an experience that touched me deeply. I was filming adelie penguins who were travelling from their colony to the ocean. But between the rocky islands where they were breading and their food source they had to cross kilometers of thick ice. I was filming the penguins on their exhaustive journey.

One day after a cold windy session I fell asleep after sunset. On the ice.

When I woke up I was surrounded by sleeping penguins. They decided to take a break, too. Peacefully we just shared a common instinct. And after I woke up the penguins woke up, too and continued their journey. Pure magic.

Where can children experiece this without having to do a major expedition? Where are those places left?

In Germany hunters are proud to do the job of wolves and other predators. They say they protect the forest. But they would never ever even think about the fact that they also scare wildlife and thus not allow our children to observe - for example - deer easily. Almost every mammel in human's land is scared to death of us.

Anyways I just think we need to reflect so much more than just how we keep the economy growing. Our planet is full of wonders. And I mean that: Full of real wonders!

Maybe more people would realise that if they woke up surrounded by penguins.

Photo by @abidextrous. .

#antarctica #naturelove #penguins #kingpenguins #moodygrams #sunrise #mountains #behindthescenes #makingof #mood #intothewild #bbcearth #earthonlocation #earthcapture #naturfilm #tierfilmer #erlebniserde #wildlife #wildlifefilmmaker #wonder #life #nature

I was overwhelmed by all the wonderful feedback for the arctic wolf sequence and the making of. That‘s why I wanna share some thoughts about the work behind it.

I consider the sequence a piece of my “blue series“. This might sound a bit pretentious to some, but in 2014 I shot a short film called “in between“ about musk oxen in the middle of winter. I would like to call this film the first part of the “blue series“.

I‘m obsessed with winter light, especially the twilight. Its blue tones create such a dense atmosphere, that experiencing it really feels like an immersion into another world.

But this light is also dependent on the snow. And we all know we are in the middle of a process of losing both the snow and the cold temperatures which generate it. In Europe winter has already shorten significantly and days with proper snow cover can be counted on one hand.

This is a loss on so many levels.

I hope the “blue series“ will allow me to create a memory of the most magical world I‘ve ever encountered. Future generations might only experience it in books and films.

But maybe it will all be simply forgotten. Lost, like tears in rain.

I just returned from another outpost at the ends of the world. And even if my location was far away from highways and agricultural land, it was obvious that there is massive change going on.

Bays which were frozen in winter as long as people can remember, don't freeze anymore. Exisiting ice is thinner has it has been in the past.

The natural circle of phytoplankton growing under the ice, feeding zooplankton which finally nourishes fish, birds and many other species, is limited to less and less sea ice cover. Hence sea bird populations have dropped by 50% in the last years.

Imagine how heart-hitting the news would strike our socities if human population has just crashed by 50% through lack of food. We wouldn't continue to fly abroad for a nice holiday weekend.

I really think we need to question our egocentric and vain consumer behaviour so much more than we currently do. Is it really necessary to fly several times per year for a short holiday? Do we need all those plastic gimmicks? Do we really need to eat meat and fish?

I just don't know but returning from these places, where the change is happening even faster than at home, really makes it hard for me to accept how numb people still are, when it comes to the big future questions.

The renowned photographer Nick Brandt responded to a comment of mine the other day in such a poignant way. He summed up what troubles me everyday: "I do fear the work may fall on deaf ears to all but the already converted [...]. There is such monumental apathy to combat." I have nothing more to add. . .

#arctic #higharctic #winter #film #moon #mountains #snow #ice #twilight #moodygrams #pastelcolors #pastel #earthonlocation #naturfilm #tierfilmer #erlebniserde #conservation  #moody_tones #moody #newtopographics #night #nightphotography  #documentary #wildlifefilm #cameraman