{"id":65471,"date":"2017-05-09T10:56:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T09:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/actualites\/2017\/05\/09\/immersions-between-brown-bears-and-polar-bears\/"},"modified":"2017-05-09T10:56:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T09:56:39","slug":"immersions-between-brown-bears-and-polar-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/news\/2017\/05\/09\/immersions-between-brown-bears-and-polar-bears\/","title":{"rendered":"Immersions, between brown bears and polar bears"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bears<\/a>
\nJacques Renaud has always been a photographer. He started out in the calanques and mountains of Provence in his youth. Then, as soon as his career as a lawyer gave him the means, he began travelling the planet. His quest: to capture images of the largest mammals, from African big cats to the great apes of Borneo.
\nBut it is for bears of every kind \u2014 polar bears in northern Canada, brown bears in Kamchatka \u2014 that he holds a particular fondness. \u201cI first went to Kamchatka<\/a><\/span> more than twenty years ago, shortly after the borders opened. Under the USSR, the peninsula was a military base, impossible to access. As soon as the borders opened, I rushed there<\/em>,\u201d Jacques recalls.
\nThere, it was a shock \u2014 volcanic, lunar landscapes and blood-red rivers. \u201cThe colour of thousands upon thousands of red salmon migrating in from the sea. It makes for striking photographs!<\/em>\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n

\"Brown<\/a> \"Brown<\/a>
\n\"Brown<\/a> \"Brown<\/a><\/p>\n

It was during this period that he first encountered brown bears. Jacques Renaud had the good fortune, at the time, to approach the bears alongside Vitali Nicolaienko, one of Russia’s foremost experts on large mammals. Since then, tourism has developed \u2014 a little. When Jacques returned to the peninsula in 2016 with \u00c9tendues Sauvages, travelling with R\u00e9my Marion<\/a><\/span>, \u201cthe safety conditions were ideal, nothing like what they were back in the 1990s.<\/em>\u201d Jacques was able to photograph the brown bears in extraordinary conditions. \u201cWe were surrounded by bears, ten or fifteen metres away. They were fishing for salmon, paying us no mind at all. One day, we even watched a mother with four cubs, full and sated, sitting calmly watching us while her cubs played around her. Even R\u00e9my was astonished \u2014 mothers rarely have four cubs. Our cameras were firing away like mad!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Emerging from the dens<\/p>\n

Jacques Renaud also saw bear cubs in Canada<\/a><\/span>, in Inuit country, in Nunavut \u2014 again with \u00c9tendues Sauvages. There, he lived out a childhood dream: capturing cubs as they emerged from their dens at the first signs of spring.<\/p>\n

\"Bears<\/a> \"Bears<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Bears<\/a><\/p>\n

Capturing this moment is partly a matter of chance: finding a bear den is not exactly within everyone’s reach. \u201cIt was the Cree running our lodge \u2014 former hunters turned to tourism \u2014 who put us on the right track,\u201d Jacques recounts. The rest is almost impossible to put into words: the photographer’s heart leaping with joy at the sight of the cubs tumbling about, the sheer exhilaration of knowing he was witnessing an extraordinary scene. \u201cIt was -40\u00b0C with the wind chill. Our cameras were firing away like mad, while the two cubs \u2014 one fairly calm, the other every bit as excited as we were \u2014 tussled beneath their mother<\/em>,\u201d Jacques recalls.<\/p>\n

When he is not at the far ends of the earth, and not representing his clients in court, Jacques enjoys sharing his passion for animals with younger generations. He supports the collective G\u00e9niale Nature<\/a><\/span>, whose aim is to involve young people in protecting nature. \u201cSome of my photographs are online on their site. It’s a pleasure to share my sense of wonder with children<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thank you, and bravo!<\/p>\n

Conversation with Karine Welter, for Magazine Exp\u00e9rience #07, March 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jacques Renaud has always been a photographer. He started out in the calanques and mountains of Provence in his youth. Then, as soon as his career as a lawyer gave him the means, he began travelling the planet. His quest: to capture images of the largest mammals, from African big cats to the great apes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":64650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canada","category-interviews","category-russia-kamchatka"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}