Bear fiction ?

in General Rants , Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Update, 14 Jan 2011: Following discussions with various people I’ve come to realise that the bulk of this program was filmed in 2009. I’ve updated the text accordingly. I don’t think it changes my conclusions. If anything it reinforces them.

Like many people I was captivated by the recently widely circulated movie extract of Polar bears destroying the BBC’s expensive and ingenious collected of “spycams”, narrated by Dr Who, er, sorry, David Tennant. With a bit of fiddling with proxies I was able to circumvent the archaic wall around BBC iPlayer and watch the whole movie.  And it was very enjoyable, even more so because I, along with the other 11 people on board the yacht Jonathan IV, spent a few days in the company of two of the stars of the movie, back in August last year. We encountered the “mother with single cub” in Sallyhamna, where the beached fin whale provided many a free lunch to many a bear last summer.

“Our” bears, at Sallyhamna on 15th August 2010. Whale backbone clearly visible

A screengrab from the BBC’s film at the same place, maybe late August ?. The rock to the right of the mother bear is easy to spot in my photo, above the whalebone.

When we were there, it certainly looked like these two would not survive much longer. The mother was very thin and seemed apathetic, not even trying to feed. The cub was tiny. So the “feel good” story coming from the movie that they did actually make it out onto the sea ice was really nice to hear.  Well, to start with it was, but then I started having my doubts. Both the timeline in the movie and some geographical facts raise some serious doubts.

The story of the bear’s escape seems to be too good to be true, for several reasons. First of all, the sea ice conditions.  Although the program was very vague indeed about the actual facts, they seem to imply that the bears left Svalbard in the vicinity of Sallyhamna in late summer. Let’s be generous and say October.  Well, looking at the sea ice extent map for October 2010, and even taking into consideration the fact that the East Greenland sea is the only area where the ice extent at that time was anywhere near the historical mean, it’s still one hell of a long swim for two unwell, under-nourished bears from north west Spitsbergen. Especially as it is likely that the cub had never swum anywhere before.

Sea ice extent map, October 2010. (Source NSIDC)

The sequencing is also pretty strange. We first encounter the two bears fishing for kelp down by the sea at Sallyhamna at about 19:30 minutes into the film. However, there is a clear view of the whale carcass during this sequence, and it is quite evident that this scene was shot after the exposed part had been fully stripped, sometime in August. But there is no mention of this. The scenes of the bear feast on the whale (around 31:00) must have been shot around late July [correction: shot in summer 2009]. Quite a lot later, after the episode with the raid on the goose colony (and where was the cub at this point, anyway ?) and the inspection of the walruses, we get told that the mother picks up the scent of the whale, and heads off towards it.  Well, fine, but the scenes we then see of her and the cub back in Sallyhamna (around 46:00) give me a strong impression of being shot at the same time as the sequence at 19:30. 

Frankly, I’m very skeptical that we’re watching the same animals here. And certainly there must be more than one female & cub bear pair around!  Had a crew somehow monitored the same pair from the time they left their den, through the summer, to the late autumn, well that in itself would be a story worth telling. The fact that they didn’t - and that this female was not tagged in any way - makes me think that they built up a narrative from a collection of unrelated shoots. This is clearly standard for wildlife documentary, but in this case I think it steps over the line. Of course, I could be wrong…but I’m afraid I’m not.

A later shot shows a mother and cub walking out along a peninsula, apparently according the the narrative heading north to find the sea ice. Problem is, as far as I recall, there isn’t anywhere that looks much like that near Sallyhamna.  And finally, when we see the ice rainbow, apparently the mother bear’s cue to take to the waves, and then we see the bears slip into the water (51:21), well, sorry, but this is without a doubt another Sallyhamna clip. All credibility is lost, I can no longer kid myself that there is a truthful story being told here.

This is where the action takes place. In August 2010 the sea ice edge was at least 100km north.

So what we end up with is an entertaining fiction with some educative truths mixed in, but largely submerged in sentimental mush. Sure, there’s some remarkable filming, in particular the sequence of the bear stalking the seal under the ice, and sure, the bears are cute, but somehow pretending that starving, stranded bears on Svalbard are a sign that they will adapt to rapid climate change is just dishonest and a disservice to the conservation movement.

Polar bears aren’t built to live on land. Don’t take it from me, take it from experts like Ian Stirling (Polar Bears) or Steven Kazlowski (The Last Polar Bear). Unfortunately, these days it seems like the BBC is more interested in entertainment.

I’m not naive, I don’t expect wildlife documentaries to present a linear narrative, and I completely understand that, realistically and practically, to tell a story which portrays the life of any animal you need to spend as much time in an editing suite as in the wild. But it is usually implicitly if not explicitly made clear that some compromises were necessary. In the case of “Spy on the ice”, too much is glossed over and dressed up as fact.

Hello world

in General Rants , Thursday, December 30, 2010

Anybody who actually subscribes to this blog (hi there!) would probably wonder why I update it so infrequently, and think that I’m really lazy or something.  Well, I guess I’m sometimes lazy, but really, I’m just so fragmented.  I’ve got at least 3 unfinished articles at the moment, and they’re quite lengthy, and possibly not terribly interesting.  And it wouldn’t take a lot to finish them, but then I hardly want to publish them all at once because that would be too much.

And then there’s photography. Looking at the galleries here, I suppose you’d get the impression I’m basically a “nature photographer”, which is an accurate enough description - sometimes. If you look at my Flickr stream, depending on where my mood is at, you might get a slightly different idea, although I do try to present a certain degree of coherence. Certainly sets like Film Noir are not typical nature photographer ... or are they ?

And then if you could look at the vast reams of unpublished stuff on my computer, you might begin to wonder of I’m actually seeing a doctor for this schizophrenia thing…

I quite often discover new photographers on Flickr who speak to me in whatever way. Unlike, I suspect, quite a lot of “nature photographers”, I’ve got pretty wide tastes when it comes to other’s work.  So, for example, I really like “Sleek Miss D’s” work, especially the Ghosts set.  I suppose I might at times approach similar territory.  At the same time I really admire how she’s managed to convey the disquiet which comes from being compelled to take on a corporate identity just to survive (well that’s how it comes across to me) - but I don’t think that’s a place I’d go to, photographically. I’ve also discovered “Wintercove” in the last few days, and her visions from Alaska are just painfully beautiful, and possibly a but closer to my comfort zone in the photographic starchart.  And then there’s “Raul Loves Photography” who’s main interest, as far as the evidence on Flickr is concerned, is a million miles away from mine - and yet I find his explorations of portraiture captivating.

I’m not a great contributor to the community on Flickr, although I do try. I try to avoid commenting just for the sake of it, and making trite comments, although it’s often hard to find the right soundbite ... and I know people appreciate encouragement.

So, with this completely spontaneous and unrehearsed blog post, from down here by the Lago di Lugano, buon anno!

Web site refresh

in General Rants , Wednesday, December 01, 2010

As my regular visitors (if I have any) will be able to see, I’ve done a bit of redecoration around here.  The current design is well over a year old, and I’ve decided it needed to focus a bit more on photography. At the same time I’ve cleaned up some stuff, and fixed some bugs - although doubtless I’ve missed some, and introduced some more.

Before

After

I had already snuck in a few changes, like making the navigation look a bit more like navigation, and adding one of those trendy lightbox doo-hicky things to the photo galleries.

I’ve also added global search, but thoughtfully hidden it at the bottom of the footer as a sort of post-modern pun (or bad design, not sure which).

Oh, and some of those little social network thingies hanging off the right edge. That’ll give me cool points.

The most obvious change is showing a random photograph upfront, linked to its gallery. After all, this is supposed to be a photography site. Sort of. So I’ve also booted the “other blog” from the home page. The latest “other stuff” is now summarised, remarkably, on the other stuff page. And finally added some permanent links to what I fondly imagine to be more interesting stuff, under the photo.

So that’s about it. There are a few other changes and little fixes I want to make over the coming days, and then when it’s all settled down I need to make the leap to version 2 of Expression Engine. Hopefully nobody will notice.  If indeed there is anybody to notice.

Then maybe I’ll get on to actually adding some content.

Diatribe

in General Rants , Tuesday, November 23, 2010

So why bother, really? Photography, I mean. Spending hours sifting through literally thousands of of globs digital dross in the hope of finding some kind of gem - always assuming I be able to recognise a gem if I found one, and of course ignoring the point that the question should be addressed before pressing the shutter. It often feels more like an obssessive compulsion, this hobby of mine, rather than a source of satisfaction and fulfilment. I do usually enjoy the process of taking the photos, but that may be more to do with place than process. And when it all comes down to it, I’m left feeling that it is all chaotic, purposeless, blindly repetitive: in summary, I just haven’t got a clue. At all.

Successful photography has direction and theme. In my opinion although individual photos may be successful, even greatly so, successful photographers need to demonstrate, repeatedly, that they can assemble a coherent body of work. They need to be able to convince the audience that they have pursued a well formulated intention. Throwing together a few photos after the act just doesn’t cut it. In other words, developing a conscious style is fundamental, and that’s where I really run into the buffers.

I’m pretty sure than any style I might be perceived to have is dictated by the camera. I mean, I’m pretty likely to take 4:3 ratio photos with an Olympus DSLR, and I’m going to tend to go for well lit and/or fairly immobile subjects.  I suppose I could argue that it was a conscious choice, but really, I just like the physical look, feel and style of the E-1 and it just carried on from there.

With the double blows of broadband internet and affordable digital cameras, photography has become very, very competitive, and is becoming much more about the photographer than the photograph. In fact there’s precious little danger of the camera being more important than the photographer these days - the camera is just another prop for the narcissistic. Just take a look at the most popular accounts on the major photography sites, and tell me that it isn’t all about ego and self-promotion. I mean frankly, are Rebekka’s photos that awesome ? Basically, no, they’re pretty average, actually sub-average considering the raw material she’s got to work with. And I don’t have anything against her (well, apart from the fact that she irritates the hell out of me), it’s just an example - but really, her fame has more to do with her, shall we say, personal characteristics, than her photography.

Whatever. Should it bother me? No. Does it? Well, clearly it does, to some degree.

The problem is there is just so much pressure to compete, and the sheer impossibility to stand out, or to do anything unique, or be part of any kind of meaningful community, is just wearing me down.

Of course, I’m starting to ramble. I’m losing the thread. I’m engaging in unwarranted and unfair diatribes against a person I don’t know in any way. I guess it’s symptomatic of the frustration of being unable to progress, unable to get noticed, unable to decide if I want to get noticed, and unable to decide if what I do has any merit.

Hey. Maybe I should buy a new lens.

Olympus: F**k off, honourable customer

in Olympus E-System , Friday, September 17, 2010

It seems that the Olympus E-Club has been shutdown. There are no links to it any more, except the “Who is a Pro” thing you can find somewhere. On the old E-Club page, registrations are disabled, and there is no login, just this:

“Dear customer,

we apologize but this service is currently not available.

Thank you for your understanding
Your OLYMPUS Membership Team”

What, pray, My Olympus Membership Team, am I supposed to understand ? (that “Team” bit is a dead giveaway that they’re Germans, by the way. Germans LOVE teams.)

I think I’m supposed to understand you couldn’t find your arsehole with both hands and a flashlight. Or indeed with a fabulous Olympus endoscope.

There IS still a “Customer Login”, on various European pages, and it accepts my password, and it has my address, but all the serial numbers I have registered are completely gone.

This goes beyond clueless, beyond incompetent. Olympus has always been absolutely hopeless on the web site front, but they’ve really plumbed the depths now.

Unbelievable.