Romania Bear Rescue

Last week I came back from a moving assignment in Romania, home to the largest Eurasian brown bear population in Europe. Together with the fine people of the Zarnesti Bear Sanctuary, my colleagues from WSPA International paid two visits to the defunct zoo at Onesti in northern Romania and helped to remove three bears out of squalid captivity.

It seems that lack of adequate facilities and ultimately, funds, as well as  implemention of the EU zoo directive has meant that this zoo had to part company with some of its bears. An all too common story in Romania, where a multitude of bears have been found suffering in small and rusted cages where they were used as pets or as attractions for restaurants and petrol stations.

Once transferred to the Zarnesti Bear Sanctuary, the new arrivals underwent a veterinary checkup before being released into a training enclosure. With over 160 acres (70 hectares) spread over a wooded hillside, this is Romania's first bear sanctuary and today houses 67 bears rescued from ramshackle zoos and cages at roadside restaurants around the country.

See the story here.

Empty London book now on the iPad !

iPad aficionados, treat yourselves to the release of my book 'empty london' as an ebook!

It's been a long time coming, but finally I've had a spare few hours (and a borrowed iPad) to put this project to bed, so it's out now! A propos bed - this is a good Sunday morning read, costs less than a fiver and is definitely worth it.

Go on then, you know you want it - get it here and let me know how you like it.

Beauty and Sadness

It is one of nature's best spectacles here in the Vysocina region: the changing of seasons, when autumn hues transform the hilly landscape into a pallette of warm colours. To me, it is the most beautiful and saddest part of the year. For now we know that summer is definitey over, leaves are transforming into yellow and rusty red tones and soon begin falling. It's getting colder and dark sooner, winter comes knocking on the door. Preparations are made for the coldest time of the year, which tends to be long and harsh: firewood is stored, cellars closed, livestock fattened before slaughter, and the mood is sombre. Another year is coming to an end and people are not looking forward to long, dark, cold nights for the next 6 months.

So thus, when a day like yesterday occurs, when the hills and valleys shine in clear sunlight for possibly the last time before the nightly frosts start, there is not really an option but to go and shoot it. There are only a few days a year like this here, and they are worth the wait.

August's assorted

Folks, I simply don't have the time to keep up. The month started by passing Cape Lisbourne and going through the Bering Strait on our way down to Dutch Harbor and ended with the Notting Hill Carnival in London. Inbetween, we shot a banner protest in front of Shell's drill ships anchored in Dutch, then I went up a comms tower in Manchester for a product shoot, and soon after I was shooting a portrait of an eminent German author in the city.

After spending most of the summer sailing around Alaska, I did manage some sunshine and beach time too, down at the Jurassic coast in Devon - life is hard sometimes. So hard that I have simply thrown together a few selects into a chronological slideshow before hitting the road again tomorrow. Enjoy!

Chukchi Sea Ice

Who would have thought that melting sea ice can be so pretty? We went back to the ice egde of the Chukchi, roughly at 71º17' North and 162º32' West on an overcast day. The ice was very different from a few days ago: the heavy winds and swell had broken the big shoals into lots of smaller pieces, with bits floating around everywhere. This time, we could not navigate our inflatable boat into it, but had to skirt around the edges. Wildlife was, sadly, absent and thus I concentrated on the weird and wonderful, sometimes crystalline shapes of the decaying sea ice.