Study in White

 

American white ibis. White is all around us. But it's more than just the absence of color. For a photographer, white is a nightmare. It gets blown out so easily in the sun or turns gray in the absence of light. But it's a big part of the natural world, the color of the moon, stars, salt spray and snow. Please enjoy this study in white.

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A snowy owl takes wing over a snow-draped beach at Stone Harbor Point. At least three owls haunted the beaches of Cape May County during an irruption year. I spent every free moment looking for them in cold and rain.

I mean, penguins have to be my fav black and white birds. This clumsy Adelie waddled down an ice sheet to get to a meltwater pond to join his buds in Antarctica. 

Some penguins tobogganed down the ice to avoid face-planting on the slippery slope. 

Frost bears are my favorite white animals. I got to see the first snowfall of the long polar winter when I visited the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This bear regained her glossy white coat by rolling in the snow. The silty beaches turn the bears brown. The dark, overcast morning made photography a challenge. We headed out in 40-knot gusts in what would ordinarily be a small-craft advisory in New Jersey. But in Alaska it was just another Tuesday.

I photographed this pretty Arctic cottongrass in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Inuit used these seed heads as wicks in their oil lamps.

A cub curls up close to her sleeping mom on a beach along the Beaufort Sea. The snow won't melt on her insulating fur, but she can still get cold. 

A blonde seal plays on the rocky beach on South Georgia Island. About one in 800 fur seals is leucistic, a recessive gene affecting pigmentation. We saw four during our time on the island. 

All baby fur seals are adorable. Then one day they become bitey murder sausages.

The world's largest bird by wingspan is black and white. The wandering albatross spends its life circumnavigating the Arctic Circle, covering tens of thousands of miles in its lifetime. How does a bird fly for that long? Albatrosses have mastered the art of dynamic soaring. They tack against the wind to gain elevation and then coast long distances, all without expending much energy at all. I was so stoked to photograph them.

Snow petrels were like little angels flying around the Ortelius. 

An American bald eagle watches the sun rise over Homer, Alaska. This one shared my campsite on the beach. I could see Steller sea lions and sea otters from my tent. Only in Alaska.

Fog rolls in off the Pacific Ocean at Point Reyes National Seashore. I was photographing the hawk in the snag.

Horned larks make a nice composition on fresh snow at Voice of America Park. 

A snowshoe hare takes shelter from heavy snow in the lea of an evergreen tree in Minnesota's Sax Zim Bog. This is one of the snowiest, coldest places I have ever visited. I have seen many snowshoe hares in Alaska, but this was the first I photographed in his beautiful white pelage.

The moon rises over one of my favorite places in the world: Mount Washburn in Yellowstone National Park. I have climbed this trail many times. You are usually rewarded by seeing bighorn sheep. I even saw the park's only mountain goat one memorable night in 1992 before they became well established. But the clever ground squirrels will steal from your backpack if you're not careful!

My uncle and I saw this snow-draped timber wolf on the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota's Superior National Forest while looking for lynx. I see wolves every time I go to northern Minnesota, ha. (Both times.) 

Sanderlings avoid the incoming surf on a beach at Stone Harbor, New Jersey.

A striped skunk finally looks up for a photo after foraging for beetle larvae for the longest 20 minutes of my life while I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. I wore shorts that night because I wasn't expecting to spend so much time in the woods during my walk to the beach at Cape May Point State Park.

Antarctica holds 90 percent of the world's ice, making it the whitest place on Earth.