This is a baby harp seal enjoying the day on pack ice near the Magdalen Islands, Nova Scotia, Canada. It was minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit. I took this picture in 1993 when I was still shooting film with a Mamiya RZ 67 medium format camera. The film I used came on a roll with a plastic spool -- I’d get 20 shots -- and when I finished the roll and took it out of the camera, there was an adhesive-backed strip of paper that I’d lick and then seal the roll. This prevented the protective paper backing from unraveling and inadvertently exposing, and thus ruining, the film. The problem was in this extreme cold, the adhesive didn’t work. It just wouldn’t stick to the paper like it was supposed to in lower temperatures. So, I stuck the tightly wound exposed rolls of film in the pockets of my jeans, hoping the pressure of the fabric would keep the film protected until I returned (by helicopter) to the hotel. Once I got there, I used rubber bands to secure each roll of film until I returned home and was able to have a lab develop the film. The settings were unrecorded, but they were probably 1/250 and f/8. Back then I used Fujichrome Provia 100 slide film for all my wildlife photography. It’s rare today to use only 100 ISO to photograph animals.
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