LEVITATING SLED DOG, Tasiilaq 2022
 
In Spring 2022, I spend two months in the Tasiilaq area in East Greenland. It was a season with extremely bad weather with one low pressure weather system after the other passing through the area. After being delayed nine days due to strong winds, I finally made it to the small settlement Kulusuk where I has a couple of hours before boarding a helicopter to Tasiilaq.

Not far from Hotel Kulusuk, I came across a group of sled dogs, and I started talking to the owner of the dogs. Normally, I would never approach sled dogs I’m not familiar with, but these dogs seemed well habituated, and the musher gave me permission to interact with the dogs. One of the dogs were particular “happy” to see me and made high jumps in pure excitement. I wanted to freeze the dog’s movement in the air, so I set the shutter time to 1/1600 seconds on my camera and started photographing. After a while I was convinced that I had what I wanted on my memory card, and I went back to Hotel Kulusuk for a cup of coffee to warm my body.

Going through the images on the camera screen I realized that I could improve the image if the dog was in “free air” and not “interacting” with the background. I left my coffee and put on my warm closes and heavy boots once again and went to the dog once again. Luckily it was still happy to see me and started jumping. Flat on my belly, I started photographing again and was able to catch the shot I had in mind before rushing to the awaiting helicopter.

The Greenland Sled Dog is such an amazing creature. Perfectly adapted to the Arctic environment, the sled dog has been important for Inuit surviving in Greenland and still is today as part of the unique dogsled culture.