SEATTLE — Seattle photographer Paul Souders wanted to get the perfect shot of a polar bear. He chronicles that adventure in his book Artic Solitare.
"I wanted to do pictures that had not been done before. I wanted to push myself as hard as I could and go past any kind of comfort zone or safety zone and just see how far I could get. And make it home in one piece."
Souders towed his 22 foot C-Dory into the arctic wilderness on four separate trips in search of Polar Bears.
"It is a needle in a haystack. except there's lots of haystacks and the needle wants to eat you."
Bears were not the most dangerous part of his adventures, "The boating, and the weather, and the navigation scared me way more than the bears did."
There were low points, like 38 degree mornings and high points, like petting Beluga Whales, "They would come up to me and I could reach out and I could pet them on the head and just touch them for a moment -- it's these amazing moments of interaction with another species that just touch your soul."
And then, he finally found his bears. His BYOB, "Bring Your Own Boat" approach paid off by getting him close to his quarry, "I could actually see her dreaming, I could like her eyes flicker. It was amazing. It was one of those stunning moments of clarity when you are allowed a window into this wild animals life."
One of his shots won the National Geographic Photo of the Year, but the real life reward he received was this, "Seeing an apex predator, in its environment, un, living alone and unafraid, that is magic."
