Alaska brown bear photo

I’ll compile a few older bear photo blogs into a collection here for you. Easier to review if you’re interested

Hey Folks,

Just returned from a week on the Katmai coast photographing brown bears. This was a new trip for me this year; I’d not been over to this specific location, or at this time of year, previously.

It was a grand trip; flying out of Kodiak, and spending a week on a boat along the coast, shooting bears in gorgeous soft summer light. My personal photography priority for the trip was bears in the landscape. I also wanted some cool “behavioral” photos, which included bears clamming at low tide, sparring with one another, and even mating. Cool stuff to shoot.

Shooting mid-summer in Alaska requires a great deal of flexibility; if the weather is clear and sunny, the best light (in this area) is at 9:30pm – 11pm, and 5:00am – 6:00am. So by the time we’d get back from a shoot, it might well be after midnight. Getting back up at 4:30am to shoot again is a rough gig. On the other hand, if the skies are overcast, we’d shift to a more routine schedule, and head out around 8am.

Switching back and forth from one schedule to the next, day to day, is hard and extremely tiresome. I slept pretty well when I got home.

And, speaking of getting home, a good tip is to make sure your luggage doesn’t get left on the boat when you fly back to Kodiak – especially if the specific piece of luggage holds your wallet and ID.

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OK – all the whining about ‘no bears’ brings us back to the grizzly. This adult male was kind of enough to give me a few cool poses, of which I think this is one of my favorites. There’s little more to be said other than ‘bears rock’.

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4 Grizzly Bears

While I’m going through my recent images, I processed this one and thought I’d post it for kicks. It’s a simple computer trick, which even a cursory look unveils. All I did here was copy the image, flip it horizontally, and paste it alongside the original. I got a split second to shoot this scene, as the bears didn’t hold the position very long – another bear came by and the cub backed away from his nonchalant mum. I was thinking about the composite when I took the frame, remembering the shot I made a number of years back (on this page).

I don’t do a lot of this kind of photoshop trickery, but sometimes it’s fun. I’m interested to hear if folks like this image or not.

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Brown bears Playing

Another photo from this past summer when I led a photo tour to Hallo Bay and the coast of Katmai National Park and Preserve here in Alaska. I’ve been photographing brown bears for many years now, and return to the Alaskan Peninsula every summer to watch and photograph these creatures. They’re simply an awesome animal to see, whether its up close and personal like this, or from a distant ridge on a mountain hike somewhere.

I intentionally picked late June for this particular tour with the hope of catching some interaction between the bears, and especially mating behavior. Brown bear breeding season is anywhere from late May through mid-July, with some exceptions even being later. Generally, early summer is the time for brown bears’ breeding season.

This image was taken the first night of the trip; we had great light, and were lucky to have this interaction in such great conditions. I wish I’d had a zoom lens on, rather than my 500m f/4 lens, but wildlife photography is definitely an art of making do with what we have handy. Circumstances such as this one are good arguments for using zoom lenses over fixed primes for wildlife photography. It’s hard to beat that flexibility sometimes.

These bears came together several times during our trip, and we were fortunate enough to see and photograph them mating a little later in the week. Definitely a highlight of the trip, for me. This particular night (this image was taken close to 11pm) they played for a while, wrestling and playfighting for a while, before separating and going their separate ways after about an hour or so. The light faded and it was over.

Definitely looking forward to heading back to Katmai this year and catching some brown bear photos. They’re always full of surprises, and we never know quite what we’ll see.

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Brown Bear Cub Photo

Just returned from 2 weeks in Katmai National Park and Preserve photographing the great brown bears, and wow, what a trip it was. Definitely one of my all-time favorite trips, this photo tour was awesome.

This young brown bear cub was one of a set of triplets we got to photograph several times, in various different settings and locations, including some great light. Good times, indeed.

I’ll follow up more with notes about the trip as I get some time. Now I’m packing for the arctic and some polar bears.

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Brown Bear with Silver Salmon

Just returned from a week on the Katmai Coast, photographing the great brown bears of the coastal region; and about a thousand gulls along with them! We had a nice time, a mix of weather, some good and bad luck with the photography, but  a good trip overall. The ladies from England were a blast to shoot with, tons of fun; we laughed and laughed for the whole week, enjoying some great time together; great food, great accommodation, scenery, wildlife and fun. Just what a photo trip should be.

This bear was one of a few we saw in Kinak Bay, just north of Geographic Harbor. The Silver Salmon were running thick in this little creek, and the fishing was at time fast and furious. Great to see.

We saw wolf, whale and bald eagles as well, all before our first day had ended. We had some great photo opportunities with some Harbor Seals, and spent an hour or more trying to catch some wary sea otters; in the end, we got a few nice images. But the bears, as they almost always do, stole the show.

Heading back to Katmai in a few days for more of the same, on the other side of the park. And I can’t wait!

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“Survival of the Fittest … Fattest”?

So we’ve all heard that ‘the law of the jungle’ is ‘survival of the fittest’, right? Well, that might need a little qualifying, perhaps. Seems that here in Alaska, Survival of the Fattest might work better.

This bear isn’t the biggest, most dominant male in Katmai National Park – though he’s certainly well up the list. But … I dare say he’ll enjoy a good winter’s nap, starting in a month or so, and he doesn’t look so ‘fit’ to me. ? Something tells me he won’t wake up hungry – that’s a helluva belly. And one of the miracles of it all is .. no cholesterol problems!

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Grizzly bear sow nursing 4 cubs

There’s probably no reason to post this photo other than it seems like a good time to post another grizzly bear photo.

This event was quite possibly one of the highlights of the 2 weeks in Katmai National Park last year, on the grizzly bear photo tour. We actually saw 2 separate sows each with 4 cubs on several occasions, which was pretty neat. But the chance to watch all 4 bear cubs nurse at once was a special treat indeed.

It’s pretty amazing how much noise the cubs make nursing on the sow. They growl and spat and purr all at once.

The mother, the sow, was pretty mellow, just kinda laid back and watched us photographers, wondering what all the fuss was about. It was definitely her most restful time of the day; the rest of her waking moments were spent hellbent chasing salmon up and down the river. Feeding 4 hungry cubs is a big job for a single mom.

What a great moment to witness.