The constant rising and falling of the tide, along with the freezing temperature creates a landscape of ice covered rock formations along the coastline of the Hudson Bay. These three images were taken at low tide early one morning before we went on our first hike in search of bears. As it turned out, a hike wasn’t necessary. I had to quickly grab my backpack, tripod and other gear as three adult males came walking directly toward us.

It was very, very cold on this particular morning. Very cold. And windy. But as much as we were all doing our best to protect ourselves from the weather, the bears seemed to be enjoying it. Every time the wind whipped up, sending granules of snow flying through the air, this bear just raised his head, stuck his face into the wind and took it all in.

With all due respect to monkeys and other creatures of the world, I’ve been told to keep the polar bears coming, so here’s yet another. Of the three bears that we saw most often, this guy was the odd man out. He was smaller than the other two and they kept chasing him off whenever he got too close. In this photo, he was standing to check on their whereabouts as they were foraging behind some nearby rocks. I also liked that I was able to capture his breath on another very cold day.

Here’s another of the rams I saw last weekend in Colorado. This guy had a particularly nice set of horns.

It was the end of the day when we spotted this polar bear taking a nap. He seemed quite content to be lying there on his back on a bed of snow.

On Friday I went to the eastern entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and was surprised to see that there wasn’t any snow on the ground. The next day I tried the western entrance and was greeted by a completely different story. Everything was covered in white, including these two little islands of pine in the middle of a cloud of mist on Lake Granby.