Churchill... We have arrived!

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July 27, 2024 The official arrival day of the trip. Everyone is here. Tatiana and Kira arrived yesterday with me, and Christine made it today. Thomas was already here; he arrived last week to explore Churchill with his wife. He shared images from his time with another lodge and a visit to Fire Island. Lots of bears feeding there, fat on a beluga carcasses.

I need to get out there, man.

The boyz… Kenny and Jeromy.

Today, my friend and local bear guide Kenny took me out on his tinny (his boat). Just the two of us, it was cool. Jeromy, another good friend, was grumbling

because he wanted to go too. Lol, kids.

I get it; I would be jealous if they went without me. All of us are just grown-ass kids, wanting to do cool things all the time. Lol. It fills me with gratitude connecting with locals on these adventures. All of us with a strong love for nature and friendship that will last a lifetime.

We went out on the boat to find a bear that was at the point. We found it resting in the fog.

The fog was thick!

We motored around for a bit. I tried to get a photo of the bear, but the fog was too thick. So, we left the bear alone and just enjoyed watching the belugas circling our boat. They were really intrigued.

The tinny is great because you can hear the belugas. Their sounds echo.

With some editing I managed to remove the fog and bring out the bear. Even though the fog looked cool and spooky. I like to see the animals in my photos. lol

I think they might have been intrigued with the echo from the tinny and wanted to listen to it closer because they kept coming up to us over and over.

The belugas made some crazy noises that I recorded. That was wicked cool. I put together a video clip from the day. Going to be filming more stories on this trip.

I really do love storytelling.

So far, Churchill has been almost perfect.

The airline left my bag in Atlanta and has been slow to get it to me. It's been three days.

But despite not having my bag, I am filled with gratitude again. I had no issues getting here. All my flights were on time, and thankfully, I have my cameras with me. To help me survive waiting for my bag to catch up, I stopped at Walmart in Winnipeg to buy some extra clothes and toiletry stuff.

So I am blessed. All is well. Especially with the nightmares people have been experiencing at airports lately, I feel really lucky to have gotten to Churchill without any delays.

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Sadly, I don't have my wetsuit, which is fine. I can rent it from the hotel. But my mask and snorkel, man! Gonna miss having that.

Hopefully, I will only have to deal with it for one more day.

The bag is supposed to arrive on Monday. Feeling confident it will be there for me.

Today is our first day in the water... the adventure is off to a great start!

I REALLY Need to Get my S#*T Together!

Janury 29, 2021 - We finished filming today. Hoping the interviews went well. The team they sent to do the interviews for Redrock was new to me. I had never worked with any of them before. But they were super cool, very professional and hard working… truly hoping we get to work together again on a future project. It was a lot of fun, getting to work on a new show about sharks. I wish I could share more details about the shoot, but I can't until it is closer to the airdate. All I can say is that it is a TV show about sharks, I am in the show, and it is on one of my favorite channels. The filming went well, but I realized that I REALLY need to get to my shit together and fast!

We are here in Florida finishing up some key interviews we did not have time for while filming principle photography for the show. The location for the interviews was at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. It is pretty here and away from the noise of Florida, which is excellent. All was grand while we shot, other than the occasional pedestrian walking by as we were trying to shoot. But we worked through it and got everything we were hoping to film.

Ok, so now on to why I need to get my shit together. We started shooting yesterday at the park. I think we were about an hour into shooting when I turned and saw four raccoons walking by our pavilion that we had rented for the day. Of course, I lost my mind when I saw them, excitedly telling the film crew that was distracted with changing camera cards and fixing lighting, about the raccoons. They casually say, "oh yeah, they are all over the place; just wait till lunch gets here." At this point, my jaw dropped, and I think my knees buckled—raccoons all over the place… what the hell. I began kicking myself because I did not bring my camera with me. I left it in the hotel room. I didn't feel the need to bring it.

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind was when we were filming bull sharks for the show, at the Bimini marina, back in December. I did not bring my underwater camera there either, because it was a cage dive, and apparently I am too arrogant to bring a camera to a cage dive.However in my defense, the water is ordinarily murky, so I left it in the room, but really I left it because it was a cage dive. Of course, we get to the marina, and the visibility is crystal clear, and there are bull sharks all over the place. The conditions are just perfect!!! aaannd I had no freaking camera. Despite it being a cage dive, it was an incredible dive, and I had a lot of fun, I did not want to get out of the cage. It still hurts that I did not bring my camera, as close as I was, the images would have been insane.

Back to yesterday, I guess I did not learn from that mistake, and now I missed out on a fantastic opportunity to photograph wild and free raccoons that were very tolerant of people. Just damn. Even as we were driving out of the park at the end of that day, there were families of raccoons just hanging out in the parking lot. I swore to myself that this would be the LAST time it would happen.

Today, I woke up and prepped for the morning shoot, and this time, I got my camera ready. While I was packing up, I could hear parrots squawking outside my balcony window. I walked out, and a pair of mitred parrots were hanging out on the high wire, dropping down onto the parking lot floor to drink from a puddle of fresh water left by the night's rain. I snapped a couple of quick pics before they flew off. The birds were on a power line, which I am not a fan of - but these are parrots, and you have to take pictures of wild parrots every time you see one. In fact, I think it is a state law, or it should be. I just took it as a sign that I was going to have a great day.

We spent the morning filming what was left of the interviews for the show. In-between takes, I would scan all around me, looking for raccoons. Sadly, nothing was around. The entire day, not one raccoon passed by our pavilion. We shot all morning, and sometime after 1 PM, our producer Sam called out, "That's a wrap!" As soon as he said that, I jumped up, grabbed my camera, and hit one of the dirt trails in search of those beautiful little trash pandas. I did not even wait for our sound guy to remove the mic he gave me to wear, I was gone. I walked for about a 1/4 of a mile with no luck, and then reluctantly, I had to head back. Sam was my ride back to the hotel, and I didn't want to miss it. I walked super slow, scanning the trees and the floor all around me… still nothing. I was about to give up when I spotted a raccoon in the shade of some trees, right in front of our pavilion. It found a piece of fruit, grabbed it, and climbed up high in the tree to eat it in safety.

1/800, f5, ISO 1600

I looked around at the surrounding trees and could see that the way the raccoon went up was how it had to come down. So I happily and patiently sat there waiting for it to finish its snack and return to the surface to look for more food. It finally started its climb down, my camera Gloria itching and ready for me to push the shutter button. The quick session with this raccoon was so good. I captured a few pretty images of it; climbing down the tree, foraging in front of the tree, and standing up. It was just fun. The raccoon could have cared less that I was there, which was so great. Having habituated raccoons posing for your camera does not happen every day. So I took full advantage of it.

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The little raccoon we found on Bimini that was sick. We gave it to the Bimini Shark Lab.

This was a total dream come true for me. When we were in Bimini filming for the show this past December, I really wanted to photograph a raccoon. the island has an invasive population of these guys. We found one while we were there, but it was sick, so I never did get to photograph it. However, I had already sent the message to the universe that I wanted to photograph one and the universe provided. I know, it sounds woo-woo, but I don't care what it sounds like, I got to snap images of a raccoon, and I am happy because today was a good day and it seems like I am finally getting my shit together.

1/800, f5, ISO 1600

Thank you guys for reading and I will see you for next week’s blog as my Florida adventures continue…

Images I Shared this week on Social Media

MARCH 10 - 16, 2019
I was going through images this week, I shared on social media. I always try not to repost images I have shared before, so that we are always putting out something new. The thing about social media is, images are lost in time. The speed of news and storytelling is always so fast, especially on Facebook, that most images never get seen. So, I thought I would try something new this weekend and share the images here in a blog.

Well not ALL the images I posted, but just the ones from this week’s stuff. March 10 - 16 to be exact. And just the header images, since I change them out, sometimes daily. Anyway, hopefully you will enjoy this and the short stories that went with capturing the images as well. As always my friends, thank you for reading and viewing my content.

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SAIL

This capture was from our December trip. I was trying get a different angle of Patches (the great hammerhead). I love this species, their dorsal fins are so impressive. This was the first day we had her on the trip, and it during our morning dive. The thing was, we had crap weather the day before, so there was a lot of debris and sand flying around still. So the images I captured were just coming out horrible. I loved the image, but when I went to process it in photoshop, it was just coming out blah, so I decided to try playing with it in black and white, and it seemed to work. Sometimes, when you think an image is lost, try a little creativity and you never know.

This was taken on the same day, later in the afternoon when the currents and the dust settled. We were in a very shallow spot, maybe 18 feet deep, and I was coming up at the end of the dive. I was hanging on the down line, after I believe, over an hour long dive and Patches was swimming around. Because of the earlier currents, and the previous days bad weather, the ocean floor was laid out in a beautiful perfect looking pattern. I saw her swimming below and swam out to snap this image of her from above, while she slowly swam by.

Dirty Girl

Keeping with the shark theme right now, this is Dirty Girl, one of the larger tigers hanging around tiger beach. The first season, we met her she was a very fiesty girl. Normally the tigers are just fiesty around the feeders, but she was very aggressive around the guests as well. I had to keep a very close eye on her when she would swim in. I later learned, due to the way she was behaving, that she was in season and was maybe lashing out at everyone, believing they were trying to mate with her. And if you ask, how do I know she was in season? There is something tigers do, when they are in season which is super unique, that is hard to explain without video…and she repeatedly did it.

I am pretty sure I have shared this top image of a mom and calf in the past, however, I think I had shared in on one of my pages, and not all three. Yes I have three FB social media pages, one personal, one for our company, SDM adventures, and one for my photography, Eli Martinez. If you are not following those pages, it is a must… for awesome content, news, stories and a devastatingly handsome photographer! AND NO… I am not biased at all when I say that last bit. lol. Anyway, back to reality and my story…

Visiting Tonga and seeing first hand the relationship between mothers and calves is something you will never forget… you can feel the love in the water. The babies are babies, playing around, dancing, and sometimes breaching. The mothers are normally resting below. The babies need more air then the mothers, so they come up quite often, play for a couple of minutes then return down to her, touching her, getting reassuring nudges from her, and when they rise up together, they are constantly touching and bonding all the way up. It is so damn beautiful.

Another shot I posted this week, here is a good angle to see the touching bond between the mother and calf as she comes up for a breath of air. I snapped this image then had to swim like mad, because they were rising up and I was in their direct path. Well her direct path.

This was a shot from our April 2018 visit to Machu Picchu in Peru. Still one of the coolest places I have ever visited. The magic of this place is indescribable. I wish I had done more homework when we planned the original trip, because there are nearby rainforests that I could of visited for shots at birds, monkeys and bears. Next time… we are planning a return trip to the area, possibly even organizing a trip for it. Between the rainforests and Machu Picchu, it is an epic trip.

One of my most favorite days in the water. We encountered a pod of spotted dolphins off Bimini. This was during a trip we run for them. We had to cancel this season’s trip, there was not a lot of interest in it. Not sure why? It’s an awesome trip. Anyway, we had a pod of very friendly dolphin’s hanging around for over an hour with us. Super social, some were mating, which I captured with stills. I was on fire about that. This group of dolphins swam up to me and went through me. Of course, I WISH, they would of done that with the sun on my back, instead of in front of me, because it yellowed out this image badly. So if they had done this with the sun on my back I would of had amazingly beautiful blue water, with these dolphins, instead I had this greenish looking tint in the background.

I tried to get as low as possible when I photographed this giant river otter in the Pantanal, Brazil. It is difficult when you are in a moving boat, trying to photograph a fast moving subject. But with a high shutter speed and ridiculous amounts of sunlight (It was freaking hot and VERY sunny when we encountered these guys), I managed to capture a few images. This was captured while these guys were hunting.

Macro photography is new to me, but I fell instantly in love with it, when I decided to practice in my backyard, on this tiny guy. This orchard spider is no bigger than a mosquito, but I was blown away with how much color it had. LIKE WHY? Why is an animal so tiny and so colorful, it just didn’t make sense to me. So since this first session, I have gone on a crazed spider kick and will be posting a blog this week on some of my macro images I captured of this tiny predatory animals. The next level for me will be stacking images. I still have a lot to learn about it, but can’t wait to get into it. I know this is different for me, but as I travel on this photography journey of mine, learning how to shoot anything and everything when it comes to wildlife is a must, if I am ever going to be able to help someone improve their photography, especially when they are with us on our travels. I want our guests to have the best experience possible.

I saved the craziest for last. I went through my crocodile images and found one I hadn’t shared yet from our 2018 expedition. Crocodiles are such amazing photo subjects and are a must for all big animal photographers. They are big and scary looking, mostly slow moving, and will hang around for hours, giving you plenty of opportunities to capture some unique images or behaviors. I absolutely LOVE photographing them. You can do no wrong with these guys.

So there you go… a few of my images from this weeks posts. Hopefully you like what you see and will comment, share it, or at least give it a thumbs up. Thanks for visiting our website.

Hugs and I will hopefully see you out in the world.
- Eli