The Cost of Getting Warm

It was early June in the Northwestern Fjord. I'd been shooting harbor seals on ice floes for hours — good light, cooperative subjects, the kind of session you don't want to end. But the cold had worked its way in, and I made a decision I've never repeated: I went inside the cabin to get something warm to drink.

The time it took to warm my hands around a cup of coffee cost me two hours of shooting. Worse, it caused me to miss an active humpback breaching multiple times and an otter raft drifting past close enough to fill the frame. I had no shot. Not because the moment wasn't there, but because I had chosen to walk away from the cold.

In Alaska's marine environments, the enemy isn't the weather outside. It's the transition between outside and inside. When cold glass meets warm cabin air, condensation is instant — and recovery time on a long telephoto can run one to two hours, if it clears at all.

The fix is simple and it costs about three dollars. Before you go inside, seal your rig in a double zip-lock brine bag on deck while the camera is still cold, with a 100g silica gel packet inside. Open it again on deck when you return. Warm air never contacts cold glass. The problem is entirely bypassed.

I now carry three or four brine bags and two regenerated silica packets on every boat day. They live in the top of my dry bag. The Northwestern Fjord taught me that the moment doesn't wait — and neither does the condensation.

Click here for a copy of my Full Condensation Prevention Field Guide