Wildlife photographer sets out to capture ‘spirit of the ice bear’

Paul Souders is a professional wildlife photographer and an accident-prone solo adventurer.

That’s a tough combination. Whenever Souders’ imagination has spirited him away on some sumptuous visual journey — and there have been many, across decades of working for outfits like National Geographic, Time magazine and Animal Planet — he’s had to learn practical lessons the hard way.

“Is it because I’m difficult and stubborn and cheap? Well, yes,” he writes. “Spend 27 hours digging a Land Cruiser out of swamp muck with nothing but your bare hands and a small cooking pot, and I wager you, too, will remember a shovel next time.”

Somewhere along the way, Souders, who’s based in Seattle, hatched a notion about sailing north via Hudson Bay to the Arctic Circle and photographing polar bears there. Maybe it was midlife crisis. Maybe it was just a continuation of his “foolishness and ineptitude,” he writes.

Either way, Souders embarked on a quest to “capture and illuminate and somehow hold onto the spirit of the ice bear.”

The story of how he accomplished that, and the backstory of how Souders went from eager young photojournalist to freelance photographic explorer, are contained in his first book, “Arctic Solitaire: A Boat, A Bay, and the Quest for the Perfect Bear.” It’s a hefty hardcover from Seattle publisher Mountaineers Books, and rich with Souders’ self-effacing humor and his appreciation of nature — as well as gorgeous photography, of course.

Souders will visit Vancouver’s Vintage Books on Saturday afternoon to read, sign copies and discuss the obsessive, unpredictable life of the freelance nature photographer. As he writes near the start of “Arctic Solitaire,” a story that has everything to do with sailing a tiny fishing boat across frigid water, all alone: “This might be a good time to point out that I hate boats.”