It was late summer in northern Norway, and I was out in a dingy. But driving snow, terrible wind, poor light and seasickness meant that conditions weren’t ideal for photography. The situation for the polar bear was, however, much worse. The ice around Svalbard had melted, stranding the bear ashore on one of the islands. Its only sustenance was the skeleton of a beached whale, and the bear would have been unable to hunt seals again until the sea froze over several months later. [+]