By Jessa Gamble -- Paul Nicklen – raised on Baffin Island and now a Yukoner – has come a long way to be a world-renowned photographer.

Paul Nicklen’s photographic style was raised by wolves. Growing up in Kimmirut, Nicklen spent most of his waking hours out on the Baffin Island hills, observing wildlife and absorbing the subtle polar aesthetic he would later stunningly capture on film. Though he hasn’t lived in Nunavut for years – his home base is now Whitehorse, and photo-shoots take him around the globe – his heart is still clearly in the Arctic. “When we go back there, it’s like he never left,” says wife Lyn Hartley. “It hasn’t changed much in all those years.”

It wasn’t the Arctic but Amsterdam where Nicklen found himself this past spring. He’d been invited to the World Press Photo Awards, where, for the second time, he picked up a first-place title in the Nature category. The prize was flattering – it cemented the 38-year-old’s elite status among the world’s outdoor photographers. But more importantly for Nicklen, he hopes his prize-winning exhibit – underwater images of the leopard seals of Antarctica -- will raise awareness about misunderstood predators, feared for their ferocity and threatened by climate change. “Nature is never as dangerous as we think. We’re a top predator, yet we’re so scared of everything,” says Nicklen. “I’ve had 500 polar bear encounters, only one of them bad.”

If anyone understands the psyche of Northern predators it’s Nicklen. In his youth, as one of the only non-Inuit in Kimmirut, he picked up bits of Inuktitut and benefited from the locals’ knowledge about animals and the land. Then, as a young adult, he led polar bear tours in Churchill, Manitoba, and guided wolf-photography trips before taking the leap to become a full-time shooter. According to his mentor, Joel Sartore of National Geographic, Nicklen even looks like he’s from the Arctic. “He’s kind of a big doughboy,” Sartore jokes. “All pale, like he’s just come from a place with no sunlight.”

Nicklen got bitten by the underwater bug early. It was a movie clip that got him – Jacques Cousteau’s killer-whale footage. In an unforgettable sequence, the orcas approach the film’s divers, then swim off in unison, disappearing into the abyss. The camera holds on the empty water, and just as the viewer starts to feel the vastness of the ocean the whales return with sharks in their mouths, parading before the divers in triumph before departing again into the depths. Upon seeing it, Nicklen says, “I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I know what I’m gonna do with my life.’”

That fascination with marine life and its accompanying passion for conservation pre-dated Nicklen’s eventual profession – he was already pursuing a degree in marine biology from the University of Victoria when he first borrowed his mother’s Pentax K1000 at age 20. With a newly earned scuba license, it didn’t take long to put the two together. Next thing you know, he was sweating through a summer of construction work, saving for an underwater camera.

Nicklen’s first published photo appeared in Up Here in the early 1990s, and he soon built an impressive portfolio. For a photographer with a conservation mission, National Geographic was an early and urgent goal, and for eight years he fruitlessly hounded the editors with clippings and letters.

Finally, he got “the call”: an opportunity to assist Sartore on a shoot in the old-growth forest of British Columbia’s Clayoquot Sound. Nicklen took along his own gear – and, luckily, a sense of humour. Nebraska-based Sartore ribbed him mercilessly about his Canadian origins, insisting he talk like SCTV’s comedy duo Bob and Doug McKenzie. “He put up with it,” laughs Sartore. “I thought it was funny and I was the employer.”

In addition to amusing his boss, Nicklen used the assignment to shoot photos on the side. They so impressed National Geographic that he was included as an author on the article. This led to a National Geographic job photographing Atlantic salmon, for which he won his first World Press Photo Award. Soon he was pitching his own ideas to the magazine. He also put together a coffee-table book, Seasons of the Arctic, published in 2000. A second book of photos, this one covering both poles, is on the verge of release.

To get the shots he does, Nicklen must often put himself in harm’s way. One National Geographic gig took him through the Beaufort Sea on a Coast Guard icebreaker for five weeks, diving wherever the ship stopped. At one point a rip-current carried him deep under the ice, the air in his tanks dwindling. It was a close call, but he came back with startling images – multi-tiered ice structures in eerie shades of blue, with light refracting through the formations.

Shots like these prompt Sartore to call Nicklen’s work fresh, surprising and cutting-edge. “Paul is an outstanding cold-water underwater photographer, and he has a driving environmental commitment,” Sartore says. He predicts Nicklen will do even more amazing things, provided he doesn’t get killed taking risks in the wilderness. “I worry about him like a nervous mother. I say, ‘You can’t take pictures if you’re dead, Paul.’”

But with international awards signalling the fruition of Nicklen’s years of effort, his risk-taking seems to be paying off. And so does his comedic training. During his award-winning sea-lion shoot in Antarctica, when wildlife researchers at one point wouldn’t allow him access to the animals, Nicklen busted out his McKenzie-brothers act. They loved it, and he was in.