Good Saturday morn, my friends!  Today, being rather disgusted with humans in general, we’re going to take a journey into the animal kingdom!  You might want to don your jackets for this one …

Each year, a special event takes place in the Wapusk National  Park in Canada. From mid-February to mid-March, the polar bears reemerge from their caves and winter slumber. Mother bears carefully surface with their four-month-old cubs, so they can take their first steps. This is the first time these little ones get to feel the sun’s warmth, even though its sub-zero temps are enough to keep most humans from making a trek.  With one exception …

Conservation photographer Daisy Gilardini, who specializes in the Polar Regions with a particular emphasis on Antarctic wildlife and North American bears. She is from Switzerland originally, and is now based in Vancouver, Canada.

She started to take photography seriously following a trip to India in 1989. Since then, she has visited more than 70 countries, camera in hand. She fell in love with Antarctica during her first trip there in 1997. She has since devoted most of her time to photographing the Polar Regions. In 20 years of polar exploration, she has joined more than 80 expeditions to Antarctica and the Arctic. Among her accomplishments, she has skied the final degree to the North Pole.

During the past 11 years, she has roamed extensively through bear country, from the Great Bear Rainforest in her home province of British Columbia to Alaska and the high Arctic. During the course of her photographic travels she has documented the challenges facing North America’s bears, including the black bear, Kermode, grizzly and polar bear.

Gilardini’s images have been published internationally in leading magazines such as National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, Canadian Geographic, Nature’s Best and Outdoor Photography. Her images have also been used by high-profile NGOs such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, among others.

And check out this …

But it isn’t only polar bears that Ms. Gilardini photographs.  Her gallery features penguins, seals, brown bears, black bears, and “others”, some of which are rather strange (though not near as strange as those mask-wearing humans these days)!

I love the penguins …

And the seals …

Spirit Bears and Black Bears …

Humans could take a lesson from these two!

And a few of the ‘other’ …

I am fascinated … amazed … at Ms. Gilardini’s skill.  What concentration and patience it must take to capture some of these shots!  If you like these, go check out her website where you’ll find much, much more!  She has an entire African gallery that is great!

Well, folks, that’s a wrap for this morning.  Have a decent weekend … get outdoors and enjoy nature … take some of your own nature photography!