Ghosts of the Arctic from Joshua Holko on Vimeo.
Joshua Holko is a polar photographer. “The cold is my home” he says in the opening sequence of the beautiful six-minute video about his life as a nature photographer in the coldest part of the world. Cold, in this instance, is defined as temperatures down to -22ºF. On the frozen sea ice of the arctic he seeks out the world’s last polar bears, hoping to photograph them to share their plight with the world. While creating this visually stunning video, his team filmed for up to 16 hours a day in the sub-zero temperatures, resulting in three cases of first and second-degree frostbite. The photography equipment struggled to function in the extreme cold from batteries depleting within minutes to brittle cables that snapped and frozen audio equipment. In the film, Holko tracks the bears to the edge of the earth for three days to photograph a mother and her cub, “as a nature photographer, these are the moments I live for.”