The Bear Facts

Alaska is known to be Bear Country. Grizzly (brown) bear to be exact. This lone female was walking along the shoreline of the Cook Inlet in search of a fish dinner. Brown bears in this area, about an hour's flight from Anchorage by small plane, are unquestionably wild. But they have so much food and are so used to seeing humans that they are not bothered by our presence, as long as we keep our distance and do not interfere with their feeding, and their offspring.

The guides in this area know the individual bears, their habits, and their favorite routes from the shore to the fields to the woods to the nearby mountains. They advise us when to move and how far, so that we do not disturb the bears in any way. In this location I have seen bears walk within 10 to 20 yards of where we are standing. As long as we are positioned off their chosen path, they have no concerns about us and pass by fairly closely.

This bear was considerably farther away than that, and was shot with a 100-400mm lens with a 1.4x extender on a crop sensor body. That is my preferred lens / body combination, and allows me to get good close-ups when the bears are near, and some nice environmental shots, like this one, when the bears are farther away.

When photographing wildlife, be prepared to shoot at all times of day. You will want to be on location when the action is good, regardless of the time of day and the quality of the light. Of course we always want perfect light, but we rarely get it. So you have to work with what you are given. This was shot late in the day in relatively low light. I chose to render the bear as a silhouette for drama. She is so small in the frame that the lack of detail in her body is not a problem. Her body position was perfect to show all four legs and her head in profile. It is unmistakably a brown bear.

I took many images as she walked by me, in hopes of getting this position. With wildlife, I always shoot on rapid burst so that I can capture slight variations of leg and head positions. That allows me to select the one I like best as the final image.

I am looking forward to being back in my favorite part of Alaska's Bear Country in mid-June.

TECHNICAL DATA
1/1600 sec, f/9, ISO 1600.  Canon 100-400mm lens set at 140mm, on Canon 7D Mark II body.  Handheld.

TODAY'S QUOTE: "Bears keep me humble. We need to preserve the wilderness and its monarchs for ourselves, and for the dreams of our children. We should fight for these things as if our life depended on it, because it does."  --Wayne Lynch