Photos of 2009
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Category Archives: Katmai National Park
Grizzly Bear Photo – Ursus arctos
A grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), close and personal, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Click the image for larger version.
Hey Folks,
In honor of the recent decision (last week) by Judge Molloy of Montana to continue to have the grizzly bears listed under the Endangered Species Act (in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem), here’s a grizzly bear photo, from my recent trip to Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. In September the Court ruling was for the US Fish and Wildlife Service to relist the bears, but the F&WS requested the judge to reconsider. He reconsidered, and turned down their appeal, so the bears remain, for now, on the ESA. I’ll write a lengthy post about it later; for now I’m going to bed.
I think September was a good month for the bears – Continue reading
Grizzly Bear at Sunset and Grizzly Bear Fall Photo Tour
Hey Folks,
NB: I’ve now added this trip to the main section of guiding website, Expeditions Alaska. By all means, browse this page, but please also visit the trip page here.
I’m excited to announce a Grizzly Bears in the Fall photo Tour for 2010. Details are posted on my Expeditions Alaska website but I’ll copy it here as well:
This coming year, 2010, I’m running a new phototour to Katmai National Park and Preserve; we’ll be basecamping in remote southwest Alaska, photographing grizzly bears, dawn til dusk, for a week. Katmai National Park is home to some of the largest grizzly bears (or “brown bears” as they’re often called in that region) in the world. Feeding largely on salmon from some of the richest salmon runs in Alaska, the bears are magnificent creatures and there’s no better time to photograph them than in the fall. This trip offers an unsurpassed opportunity to photograph wild grizzly bears in a remote and brilliantly wild setting and promises some simply incredible photographic possibilities.
Schedule:
– Trip #1: Sept 19-25, 2010.
– Trip #2: Sept 26-Oct 2, 2010
Grizzly bear and fall color
Hey Folks,
As I said in a recent post, on my recent trip to Katmai National Park and Preserve I really hoped to make some images that featured not only the great grizzly bears, but also the awesome fall colors of the boreal forest . The Black Cottonwoods of the area provide the perfect background for photographing grizzly bears, but rarely do photographers seem to combine the 2. Most folks come up to Alaska and shoot the bears in the summer, and I think they’re missing out. The classic shot of a grizzly bear fishing for salmon at Brooks Falls is nice, and only generally possible mid-summer, of course, but there are a lot of other opportunities around in the fall that can be equally exciting. Great fall colors make stunning backdrops, and can really bring a vibrancy to the image. Stepping back, zooming out, and letting the scene dictate the photos is often the key.
In this photo I enjoy the sense of relationship between subject and environment – the dichotomy is largely only a function of our thought processing. The idea that the “environment” is something other than everything is a little peculiar; the subject IS the environment, as equally as the environment is the subject. There is really no difference between the bear and his habitat. Continue reading
Grizzly Bear Chasing Salmon
Hey Folks,
This Post is About Motion Blurs, Art and Technique
One of the photos I wanted this year was some slower shutter speed blurs of grizzly bears chasing spawning Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) up the river.
This kind of image is difficult to do with grizzly bears; well, not difficult to do, but difficult to manage a photo that works.
More so, I think, than with most other animals.
The result of this is that it seems to take about 5 times as many attempts to get a decent ‘panblur’ of a grizzly bear than it might, for example, of a caribou or wolf.
What’s a Panblur Photo?
What I’m calling a ‘panblur’, for those of you who aren’t certain, is a technique of slowing down the shutter speed when shooting movement, so that the subject becomes blurred, rather than crisp and sharp.
You can see in the image above the spashing water and the legs of the bear are not to sharp at all. By panning the camera along with the bear as it races through the water,
Continue readingNikon Capture NX2 and Adobe CS4.
Photo above extracted via Nikon Capture NX2.2.2 Continue reading
Brown Bear Photo.
Hey Folks,
Here’s the same bear I posted the other day that was chasing the salmon. If it looks noticeably different in this picture (and it should), you can thank Nikon .. and stay tuned to a forthcoming post about that. As I said in that post, this bear was simply beautiful .. amazingly beautiful. What a treat life is to grant us the opportunities to see such creatures. I’ve only been back from my trip 2 weeks, and I already can’t wait to get back to the bears next year; I wish I hadn’t left. If you’re interested in a trip next fall to photograph these bears, drop me a note, and keep an eye on my guiding website, Expeditions Alaska for more information. It’ll definitely be a great trip.
Brown bear, Katmai National Park, Alaska.
Cheers
Carl
Grizzly Bears or Landscapes, Wilderness Discussion.
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” – Thich Nhat Hahn.
Hey Folks,
Well, with all the comments about landscapes versus bear photos on the last few pages, I thought I’d try a compromise. I know, I know, compromises end up pleasing no one, right? Well, so be it.
This is possibly the last photo I took on my trip last month, a sunset over Naknek Lake – I was hoping for some nice clear skies the following morning – and actually had a big sunrise – but then it clouded over, very soon afterward, and no good light was had for the morning shooting. Then I had to pack and get ready for the plane to come pick me up. The trip was all over too soon.
The photo is one exposure, so no real photoshop trickery – I even left the gull in the bay (@ Ron 🙂 ).
The real reason I wanted to post this photo was, honestly, a talk I went to listen to tonight, at a local bookstore, by a great Alaskan writer, Bill Sherwonit. Continue reading
4 Grizzly Bears
Click on the image above for a larger, more detailed version.
Hey Folks,
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.
Thanks.
Cheers
Carl
Grizzly Bear photo
Hey Folks,
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’.
Cheers
Carl