The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

This is the Grand Prize Winner of National Geographic’s best photo of the year competition, taken by Seattle-based photographer Paul Souders. It’s titled The Ice Bear, and it features a female polar bear staring at Paul from underwater. It’s an outstanding image, but I think the rest of his series are equally good — or even better!

I asked Paul — who also won the 2013 BBC Wildlife photographer of the year award — if it was scary to be so near this huge wild beast. He told me in an email that “there’s always a little jolt of adrenaline when I’m working close to bears. But to be honest, sitting in a small rubber zodiac boat 30 miles offshore, out of sight from land, is the scariest and most dangerous part of it.”

He gave us permission to publish these awesome documents:

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

The Best Nature Photo Of The Year Is This Badass Polar Bear

His account of the event is even more awesome:


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