Hasta La Ideas

Clever camerawork captures endangered polar bears on their trek across the Arctic tundra

Innovative wildlife filmmaker John Downer uses covert digital technology to bring human audiences astonishingly close to the most reclusive wild animals. With elephants and tigers as previous subjects, Downer’s latest offering is focused on the beautiful but endangered maritime species in Polar Bear: Spy On The Ice.

Downer employs three types of cameras to track the lives of two mother bears as they lead their clubs across Arctic Norway in search of seal hunting grounds for the den’s survival. Not letting any of the frozen conditions get in the way of filming, the three cameras each offered a unique way of capturing the bears. The Snow-cam, disguised as a lump of snow, was equipped with four-wheel drive and tundra wheels to get across land and ice. The Blizzard-cam is rigged with propellers, allowing it to reach speeds of 37 mph, while the Iceberg cam was thoroughly waterproofed to maneuver between sheets of ice and under water to capture the polar bears swimming under the ice.

The cameras didn’t always blend into the Arctic’s barren environment though, and late last year an adult male polar bear smelled a ruse, discovered he was on candid camera, and destroyed more than $200,000 worth of equipment with his mighty paw. Fortunately secondary cameras caught the entire act, showing the bear’s impressive cunning and stupendous strength.

As the Arctic ice recedes the show offers a glimpse into a disappearing world that scientists fear could be lost forever this century. The one-hour special has already aired on BBC but will premiere stateside this week on Discovery’s Animal Planet at 10pm (EST) Thursday, 10 March 2011.

With the Olympus PEN E-PL1, you can take your photography to new places. Compact like a point-and-shoot, it packs an SLR-quality sensor, HD video recording, and eye-popping in-camera filters. Its Live Guide makes experimenting with depth-of-field and shutter speeds easier than ever. (Check out CH’s review and field test of the EPL1’s predecessor, the E-P1.)

What would you do with this much camera in the palm of your hand? Direct a digital film? Document an expedition? Olympus offers the chance —and $5,000 to make it happen—with its “PEN Your Story Challenge.”

Voters on YouTube will nominate the top 20 video proposals. From this group, judges from Olympus and the YouTube community will select six finalists. They’ll receive their own E-PL1 and $5,000 for their projects.

Once the finalists have uploaded their completed projects to YouTube, voters and Olympus judges will crown the Grand Prize winner, who’ll win a trip to New York City and an invitation to the US Open on Olympus Day. The winner’s project will be showcased at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

To enter, submit a video proposal on how you’ll unleash the E-PL1’s innovative features to www.youtube.com/getolympus. There, you’ll find tips on producing your submission from Erik Beck of Indy Mogul. More details can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and at getolympus.com. The contest is open to US and Canadian residents.