Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/593532
MADE IN MANITOBA 24 G O I N G P L A C E S | W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 dennis fast Cool Clicks Braving the elements with wildlife photographer Dennis Fast by Andrew Penner I t was the kind of morning only a cold- blooded critter from the Arctic could appreciate. The prairie, frozen hockey- puck solid, was a bleak blur, a desolate smear of white and wind. Truthfully, I was wishing I were at home, drowning in my duvet, instead of bumping around on the backroads with my camera gear. But then, just as I was ready to throw in the towel and head home, the sun burnt a hole in the clouds and a beautiful amber glow peeled across the northern plains. I stopped my car and leapt outside, into the brutal elements, and was excited to see my subject blazing with warm, dramatic light. Thanks to my persis- tence, I was shuttering a compelling scene – albeit with frozen fingers and numb feet. Outdoor photographers are a funny breed. It's one thing to step outside your hotel room on your Mexican vacation into a warm tropical evening and photograph the sunset glow over the shimmering sea. However, hard- core nature photographers – especially those working in Canada – have to take the good with the bad. The sun with the sleet. The blue skies with the blizzards. Indeed, there is often a price to pay if you want compelling winter imagery. And there isn't a Canadian nature photographer alive who doesn't have a story, or two, to tell of braving the elements. Take Dennis Fast, for example, a profes- sional photographer based in Steinbach who has embarked on numerous extreme missions shooting polar bears and other wildlife in pre- dominately the Churchill area. "When the temperature dips to -40 C, as it often does in Churchill, there are certainly challenges," says Fast, whose recently released self-pub- lished book, Touch the Arctic: Churchill Wild, captures in stunning detail the stark beauty and amazing wildlife of this special region. Fast's previous book, Wapusk: White Bear of the North, published in 2003 by Heartland Associ- ates, was a Canadian best seller. He also recently published a children's book, Princess, which was nominated in 2015 for Children's Book of the Year by the Manitoba Writers' Guild. His work has also appeared in hundreds of newspapers, magazines and calendars. "Interestingly," says Fast, 72, a retired school principal, "from an equipment stand- point, digital photography has actually made shooting in bitterly cold temperatures easier. Film would get so brittle from the cold it would break. And the batteries are now much better as well. When digital cameras first came out, the batteries would last for five minutes in extreme cold. at's it. How- ever, frost spots on the lens can still be a problem. You're actually better off leaving A sleeping bear, playful Arctic foxes (top right) and mother with cubs (right). Book with CAA Travel to save 10% on Frontiers North Adventure's Northern Lights & Winter Nights Enthusiast tour. Includes a night photography workshop!