Client Story: Disney Nature Polar Bears

Was a pleasure recently working on the stills (video and photo) for the newly launched Disney Nature production of “Polar Bears”.

One of my specialties is to grade and retouch video grabs in the same ethical way as stills images and there were some lovely images to work on for this project.

Of particular note is to keep the natural tones and definition in polar bear noses, sounds a little strange but its quite common for people to boost contrast and end up with black featureless noses when working on polar bear images. Perhaps a minor point to get picky about (!) but its best to represent nature in its glory rather than some compromised version (Im pleased to say the film colorist also retained natural detail also in the moving images)

You can read about the production here: https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/movie/polar-bear

The film is available to Disney+ subscribers to watch now.

(Fun fact: I started working stills for Disney Natures film “Bears” in 2012 (film released in 2014). This was a film about a grizzly bear family in Alaska. In that instance I got a mention in the film credits at the end as “Stills colorist”, not 100% certain but I cannot see any other stills colorists listed in any other film credits!)

(Update, apparently they credited me on their production of “Penguins” also – thanks Disney Nature!)