Category Archives: Wildlife

Wildlife Photos. Notes and thoughts related to wildlife photography.

Polar bears in black and white

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A black and white rendition of this young polar bear approaching the camera. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

A black and white rendition of this young polar bear approaching the camera. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

Sometimes I wonder if anyone’s still here.

These days, when I do blog, it’s mostly over at Expeditions Alaska. I definitely recommend you check it out over there, if you’re interested, and click on the “Get It By Email” link to stay connected and updated with all the goings on.

I simply found keeping a couple blogs going not worth the time. Maybe I’ll post here from time to time when I get bored, LOL.

Anyway, here’s a polar bear photo from this past fall. We spent a couple weeks in the arctic, again, and had some great photography opportunities with the bears. Never ceases to amaze me how fascinating it is to observe and photograph these incredible creatures. I’ve never really found another animal quite like the polar bear.

I converted this photo to black and whit to see how ti might come out and was pleasantly pleased with the results. What do you think?

Cheers
Carl

Polar bear cub photo

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Polar bear cub, ANWR, Alaska.

One fat young polar bear cub, sitting back on his haunches, totally chilling. It’s great to see a happy polar bear. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

hey folks,

Just thought I’d wrap things up for the year with another polar bear photo. This one I took a couple of years ago, but I ran across it this evening doing some editing and so on and thought I’d post it. I just love the pose and feel of this shot.

Due a cancellation, I have some space on my 2016 polar bear trips. Please let me know if you’re interested, the few spots for this trip typically fill up early.

Hope you all had a good year, and wish you all the best for the holiday season and the coming year.

Cheers

Carl

Free Polar Bear eBook

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Hey Folks,

Here’s a free ebook, available only to subscribers of my Expeditions Alaska newsletter. And, even better, here a bunch of absurdly great reasons why you want this ebook.

  1. It’s free
  2. It’s a great eBook
  3. Over 80 polar bear photos
  4. My newsletter is awesome
  5. Polar bears are super cool, and
  6. Nobody should need more than 5 reasons for this eBook.

So what is it? It’s a collection of photos of polar bears. Over 80 of them. I’ve written a piece or two about the bears as well. I think it’s a pretty cool little project. Download a copy and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your review of it.

Just click on the image below.

Polar Bear photo ebook by Carl Donohue and Expeditions Alaska

Thanks so much,

Cheers

Carl

Alaska Wood Frog

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Alaska Wood Frod in Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Alaska Wood Frod in Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Quite a break from the blog. Lucky me!

Here’s a cool photo of a critter we don’t see a lot of in Alaska; the Wood frog. Taken along the coast of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park near Malaspina Glacier. We saw quite a few of these wood frogs, and literally, thousands of tadpoles. I haven’t seen a tadpole in 25 years. Way too cool.

Cheers

Carl

Editing some old images – what to keep, what to toss

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A young male brown bear walks up a salmon stream fishing for Sockeye salmon in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

A young male brown bear walks up a salmon stream fishing for Sockeye salmon in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

So far this winter, I’ve spent a good bit of time editing old images from my hard drives. Mostly, cleaning up the hard drives and deleting images I don’t wish to keep. I’m trying to be a little lot more ruthless in my editing lately, and really have been cleaning up the storage space. I cleaned out over 50GB of space last week, and I’m still only a fraction of the way into that 1TB drive. I’ll probably cut it in half by the time I’m through.

It’s difficult to know exactly what to keep and what to drop some times.

Here’s a brown bear image I recently had a sale inquiry about, of a brown bear from Katmai National Park and Preserve. A beautiful bear, don’t you agree?

So when this bear came walking up the river towards our group, I shot a number of images. 22, in fact. Mostly, poorly frame photos where a branch disturbs the background, or the bears ears are back or he’s looking out of the frame or some such things that distract from the image. Maybe 3 or 4 are keepers from the sequence. I’ve processed and uploaded 2 to the website; here’s the other photo I uploaded to the site. The rest of the sequence really aren’t images I’m likely to sell. Continue reading →

Alaska Polar Bear Video

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Hey Folks,

I thought I’d share this video on my site here. I wrote the tune, a number of years ago, and recorded it with some friends in Atlanta, GA, when I lived there. Great musicians all of them, and it was a treat to record with them. I played the guitar parts.

The video and stills I shot in 2013 on my Alaska Polar Bear Photo Tour in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. One or 2 of the clips were shot by clients on the trip, and thanks go to Sue P and Munir K for their permission to use their clips. See my collection of stock polar bear photos here.

Cheers

Carl

Polar bear photo and sunrises

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A young polar bear on the prowl, silhouetted at sunrise, on the frozen ground of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska. Polar bear, Ursus maritimus, Alaska.

A young polar bear on the prowl, silhouetted against a colorful sunrise, on the frozen ground of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska. Polar bear, Ursus maritimus, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

Everyone loves a great sunrise or sunset, right? And everyone loves polar bears; seriously, does anyone NOT love polar bears? So who loves the 2 together?

We set out this morning with high hopes, clear skies and the beginning of color on the horizon. Everyone hoped for a nice sky and some polar bear activity. Hoping, and getting are two different things.

So how does it play out? The sunrise turned out to be, in a word, spectacular. The morning itself, frustrating.

We found some polar bears relatively soon, but they weren’t really in a great location. On top of that, they were asleep. certainly, polar bears are so photogenic that even asleep, they make a great subject. But they were sleeping just below a short embankment, with the colorful sky above and beyond and so we couldn’t find a way to really make it work. One option might have been to shoot multiple exposures, steadily, and then blend the 2 together to properly capture detail in the foreground and the background. I shot a couple of images like this, but even as I was photographing, I knew it wasn’t really happening. OK stuff, but nothing grand. Continue reading →

Polar Bear Sleeping in a Snowstorm

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A polar bear sleeping on the snow covered ground of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Polar Bear, Ursus maritimus, ANWR, Alaska.

A polar bear sleeping in whiteout conditions, on the snow covered ground of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Polar Bear, Ursus maritimus, ANWR, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

A quick post for while I’m gone; given the current weather most of the readers in the Lower 48 states are experiencing, this one might be somewhat apropos. A polar bear, sleeping in a snowstorm. See folks, it really isn’t that bad.

Polar bears are simply ridiculously photogenic. Even asleep, on a blanket of snow covered ground, and a foggy misty background, they simply look great. It’s a good thing though. Photographing polar bears, or grizzly bears, involves a lot of watching the bear sleep. And sleep. So it’s a nice experiment to see if we can come up with decent photos of the bears sleeping. Continue reading →