He trudged on through the bitterly cold Yukon woods in his snowshoes, determined to track down his elusive subject matter. Hiking solo, 55-year-old wildlife photographer John Marriott was set on photographing one particularly stealthy apex predator.
The odds and the elements seemed against him.
On the first week, he had tagged along with a lynx researcher guide, yet they found no fresh tracks let alone any real lynx to photograph at all. “We went everywhere, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, hiking, driving—everything,” Marriott told The Epoch Times. “We were checking all of her traps and everything and just couldn’t find anything.”
Then the guide called it quits. “Thankfully, I booked the second week on my own,” Marriott said.
On week two, Marriott, who hails from Salmon Arm in B.C., was a one-man show. Dense thicket made the going tough while minus 29-degree temperatures promised suboptimal shooting conditions at best.
Marriott, who was gifted a Kodak Instamatic at age 6 and who has travelled all over Canada photographing animals, recently won in the Animal Portraits category of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards held by the UK’s Natural History Museum.
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