A THOUSAND WORDS

Remarkable Wildlife Photography from Atikokan’s Alan Poelman

The animals in Alan Poelman’s Instagram feed @alftown give us a rare glimpse of the wild world, where foxes, wolves, black bears, and great grey owls calmly look right into the camera, surrounded by their natural habitat and rendered in breathtakingly crisp, colourful detail. “They present an intricate kind of gaze; it’s that eye contact,” says the Atikokan photographer. “I’m really, really lucky in terms of my encounters.”

Poelman, a social worker who works in mental health, got seriously into photography about five years ago. During his education, he wrote about the benefits of photography as a mental health tool, and he decided to take his own advice. “It’s like a mindfulness exercise—grounding yourself in the present moment, and the experiences that are happening when you’re there,” he says. “So you’re not thinking about past instances or encounters that you might be worried about, or ruminating about the future; you’re really engaged in that moment and focused on capturing either an animal or a very surreal landscape. That’s one of the aspects I like most about photography.” After a shoot, he says he feels lighter, or sometimes rides a wave of excitement for a day after a particularly memorable encounter with an animal, like a recent five-minute viewing of a lynx.

A self-taught photographer who spent hundreds of hours both learning skills online and honing them in real life, Poelman says that he’s best able to come across animals when he gets up very early and spends time driving in likely areas. He explores the northwest as well as other spots in North America, with his camera buckled into the seat beside him so it doesn’t crash to the floor when he brakes suddenly after spotting an animal. A telephoto lens to take clear shots from a long distance is essential, of course, as is the ability to quickly frame the shot and snap the images before the animal moves on. While he’s best known for his wildlife and landscape images, it’s perhaps surprising that Poelman’s favourite

locales are in fact urban landscapes. “I actually like taking pictures of urban environments, like cityscapes at night time. Toronto and San Francisco have been some of my favourite places I visited and I enjoy those pictures the most.”

Poelman’s work has been featured in Canadian Geographic and Mountain Life magazines, and he’s been hired by Ontario Parks and Travel Manitoba to capture their local landscapes and wildlife as well. He and a fellow photographer are interested in a gallery show someday soon. His ultimate gigs: “Iceland. I've never been there. I’d love to go and do some landscape photography and there’s some pretty cool critters around there as well. And I think it’s pretty cliché for a lot of photographers but an African safari—various large cats, elephants, zebras, giraffes— that would be a dream.”

Follow @alftown on Instagram.