The caravan album
Thirty-one days, twenty-some rigs and one very photogenic bear. Rather than everyone going home with a partial set, we're pooling them: add your photos to the shared album and you get everybody's. The Photo Team draws on it for the end-of-trip slideshow, and the Trip Journal pulls pictures from it too.
The album goes live before departure. Once the shared album exists, these buttons will point
straight at it — bookmark this page now and it will just start working. (Setup: one line to paste
into photos/index.html.)
Adding photos from your phone
Easier than you would expect, and it does not care what phone you carry. Tested from an iPhone: tap the link, choose Google Photos when it offers, pick full size, and pull straight from your camera roll. Do your first upload at the rendezvous while there is still real Wi‑Fi, so you know it works before you need it.
1 · Open the link
Tap Add your photos above. It opens in the Google Photos app if you have it, otherwise your browser. If it asks you to sign in or to Join the album, do that once and you are set. If it does not ask, you are already through — carry on.
2 · Pick from your camera roll
Select as many as you like — whole days at a time is fine, and videos work too. If it offers you a choice of upload size, pick the original / full size. There is plenty of room behind this album. On an iPhone you can also go the other way: select in your Photos app, tap share, choose Google Photos, then this album.
3 · Let it upload on Wi‑Fi
Campground Wi‑Fi is thin and Churchill data is expensive. Add them whenever you like — uploads queue and resume on their own once you are on a decent connection. Nothing is lost if you drive out of range mid‑upload.
A few things worth knowing.
- Caption the ones that need it. Tap a photo, swipe up, add a line. Who, where, what happened next. In three months nobody remembers which lake that was.
- Your originals stay yours. Adding a copy to the album changes nothing on your phone, and you can remove anything you added at any time.
- Shoot and upload at full resolution. Google Photos app › Settings › Backup › Upload size › Original quality. There is plenty of room behind this album — no need to use Storage saver, and originals are what the Photo Team needs if anything gets printed.
- Somebody else's rig or a good portrait of them? That is the photo they do not have. Post it.
- Nothing is published anywhere else. The album is visible only to people with the link — the caravan and whoever you choose to pass it to.
The album is not a backup — keep your own originals.
It is a shared pool, not an archive. It lives in one Google account, and anything you add you can also remove — which means the collection is only ever as safe as the copies people keep themselves. So:
- Do not delete photos off your phone just because you have added them here.
- Adding a photo to the album copies it. Your original stays on your phone, untouched, at whatever resolution you shot it.
- A full-resolution copy of the whole album is pulled down and archived periodically during the trip, so there is a second copy of the pooled set. That backup is not automatic and it is not instant — treat your own phone as the real original.
Adding photos — the fine print.
- Your photos stay yours. You keep the copyright to anything you shoot. Adding it here does not change that.
- What you are agreeing to is that the caravan may use it for the trip's own purposes — the Trip Journal on this site, the end-of-trip slideshow, and any keepsake book or video the group puts together afterwards.
- Credit where we know it. If we know who took a picture, we say so.
- You can pull anything back out at any time, and it comes out of the album.
- Anything beyond that — commercial use, or use outside the caravan — is a separate conversation. Someone should ask you first, and you are free to say no.
If a photo of you turns up here and you would rather it did not, say so and it comes down. No explanation needed.
Shooting notes for this trip
Bears from the buggy
- Longest lens you own, but don't ignore the wide shot — bear-in-landscape tells the story better than a headshot.
- Shoot from the open window rather than through glass; heated buggy air over cold glass makes everything soft.
- Fast shutter (1/1000 s or quicker) — the buggy rocks even when parked.
- White bear on white snow fools the meter. Add about +1 stop of exposure compensation or the bear turns grey.
Aurora at night
- Tripod, and a remote or the 2‑second timer.
- Manual mode: widest aperture you have (f/2.8 or wider), ISO 1600–3200, 5–15 s. Shorter when the lights are moving fast.
- Manual focus, set on a bright star, then tape the ring — autofocus hunts in the dark.
- Recent phones do very well in night mode. Brace it on something solid and let it run the full exposure — iPhone specifics below.
- Shoot RAW if you can. Aurora colour is where phone processing struggles most.
iPhone 16 and up, on the tundra
- Set up the Camera Control button first. The button on the right edge launches the camera without unlocking — light press locks focus and exposure, slide to zoom. It is touch‑sensitive, so it will not work through thick mitts. Liner gloves or capacitive fingertips, or you will be bare‑handed at −20 °C.
- Know your reach. 16 and 16e give you a 2× optical‑quality crop off the 48 MP main sensor. 16 Pro and up add the 5× telephoto — that is the one that fills the frame with a bear from the deck. Past the optical steps it is digital mush.
- Turn on 48 MP. Settings › Camera › Formats › ProRAW & Resolution Control. Shoot wide and crop hard later — on the tundra that is your extra lens.
- Beat the snow meter. Half‑press Camera Control or press‑and‑hold to lock, then drag the sun slider to about +1. Untouched, iPhone renders a white bear grey.
- Give autofocus something dark. Tap the bear's eye or nose — white on white makes the phone hunt.
- Action mode for handheld video; the buggy rocks even parked.
- Aurora from the Lodge: brace the phone on the rail or a beanbag, 3‑second timer, let Night mode run its full 10–30 s. Pull exposure down slightly so the curtains keep their structure instead of blowing to flat green. Pro models: ProRAW, and recover the colour at home.
- Never the flash. Not at a bear, not at a dog, not from the buggy.
GoPro HERO13 and up
Be clear what it is for: a GoPro is a wide‑angle camera. It will not reach a bear 80 m away — that is the phone's or the long lens's job. What it will do better than anything else you own is the experience: the deck, the ride, the train, the dog team, the Lodge.
- Enduro batteries only, and keep them warm. Standard cells die fast in Churchill. Carry three inside your parka and rotate.
- Anti‑fog inserts. Cold camera into a warm buggy is the classic way to lose a morning. Drop inserts in and bag the camera before you step inside.
- Voice control is the real cold‑weather feature. “GoPro, start recording” works in mitts. The touchscreen does not.
- HERO13's HB lenses: Ultra Wide for the deck and the sled, the ND filters for bright snow — snow at midday will blow out without one. Auto Detection means the camera sets itself up when you swap.
- HyperSmooth with Horizon Lock on the moving buggy and the dog sled. 4K60 is the sweet spot; save 5.3K for the shots you know you will crop.
- Aurora: Night Lapse or Star Trails on a small tripod, 20–30 s shutter, ISO capped around 800. Set it running and go back inside — it will still be going.
- Ask before you mount anything to a buggy rail, the sled or the train. Do not assume, and never rig something that could come loose near the dogs.
- GP‑Log if you intend to grade. If you do not, leave it off — flat footage nobody grades just looks flat.
Gear in the cold
- Cold kills batteries. Carry two or three spares in an inside pocket and rotate them.
- Coming back into a warm buggy or lodge fogs and condenses gear — bag the camera before you go in and let it warm up sealed.
- Thin liner gloves so you can work the controls without going bare‑handed.
The Photo Team builds the end-of-trip slideshow from this album · Trip Journal · Back to the trip hub