Posts Tagged ‘bears’
Brown bears fighting
Friday, September 16th, 2011Grizzly bear photo
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
A grizzly bear (brown bear, Ursus arctos), stands on the edge of a salmon stream in Katmai National Park and Preserve. Grizzly bears can range in color from dark brown and black, as this one is, to a blond, almost white color. Fall foliage, Grizzly bear, Katmai National Park, Alaska. Please click on the image to view a larger version of the photo.
Hey Folks,
Here’s a photo from the first morning out on my recent trip to Katmai. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and I was able to get out and shoot before returning to camp to meet the folks coming out for the first week’s photo tour. I’d also walked and photographed the river the previous evening, and it gave me a great opportunity to scout around a bit and get a head’s up on things like the river level (which fluctuates greatly year to year, even week to week), which bears were hanging where, where the best fall colors were, etc, etc.
The bear population this year was even higher than last year, with over 70 bears in the area. I recognized many from previous trips I’ve made here, but this beautiful dark bear was one I hadn’t seen before. (more…)
Grizzly bear cubs photo
Monday, October 4th, 2010
4 grizzly bear (brown bears, Ursus arctos) in the forest of Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image to view a larger version of the photo.
Hey Folks,
Welcome back to the land of the Great Bear!
This year’s grizzly bear photo tours were absolutely awesome. We had cubs, cubs and more cubs. Big bears, little bears, fat bears, pretty fat bears, REALLY fat bears, and Rush Limbaugh-fat bears.; we’re talking, R-E-A-L-L-YYY fat bears. Dark bears, blond bears, etc, etc – all of them a real treat to photograph. There were well over 70 bears in the area, so it was a simply incredible experience.
I’ve not yet edited hardly any of the shots from the past 2 weeks, but I’m pretty excited about some of the photos I took. (more…)
The Great Bear
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
A large adult grizzly bear sow (female) walks along the edge of Naknek Lake, fall coors behind her, Katmai National Park, Alaska. Please click on the image to view a larger version on the photo.
Hey Folks,
A grizzly bear photo from my trip to Katmai National Park and Preserve last fall. This grizzly old sow is one of the larger females I’ve seen …. most folks think she’s a boar. It’s a real treat to be able to return to a place like Katmai and see the same individual animals I’ve seen and photographed before. I’m hoping this big bear has some young cubs when I return there in September this year.
‘The Great Bear’ is just one of the names commonly given to the grizzly bear by Native Americans. A closeup look at this sow suggests why. She’s awesome.
Cheers
Carl
Bear Claws; black, polar and grizzly bear claws
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Comparison of Bear claws - black bear (Ursus americanus) claws, polar bear (Ursus maritimus), grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) and Kodiak bear claws. Please click on the image for a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
I thought I’d post this shot, as it might be of interest to some folks. From left to right, the claws are: black bear, polar bear, grizzly bear, coastal brown bear or Kodiak bear.The polar bear is the only true carnivore out of those species, but it’s claws are but a fraction of the size of those belonging to the great grizzly, and in particular, the coastal brown bear.
Bear claws, and particularly the grizzly claws, were long revered as a symbol of power, both physical and spiritual, to many Native American Indian cultures; wearing the bear claw was often only an earned respect. Anyone’s who’s seen such fearsome weaponry up close can attest as to why.
The relationship of the polar bear and the grizzly bear is interesting. (more…)
Photos of 2009.
Friday, January 8th, 2010
Dawn rising over Mount Blackburn, elevation – 16,390 feet (4,996 M), winter, Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, Alaska. Click the image to see a larger version and to browse the rest of the gallery.
Hey Folks,
I thought I might make a blog post, the first for the new year, with a quick presentation of my favorite images from the past year. Not necessarily a “best of”, but just a collection of 12 images, one from each month, each of which mean something to me. Some of these have appeared on the blog before, some have not.
The first one is my favorite image of Mt. Blackburn I’ve taken so far, taken one cold morning a year ago. One of the primary reasons I wanted to spend winter in the McCarthy area was this particular scene. I knew the mountain would get great light in the winter, though I’d only viewed it from here in the summer previously. During the summer the great light is on the northside of mountains here in Alaska, so I’d never really viewed this scene in the great alpenglow you see here. A couple of winters in a cabin in the woods rewarded me in many ways, and I consider this image a nice memory of those days. Good times.
The 2nd photo (more…)
Grizzly bear and fall color
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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. (more…)
Grizzly Bear Chasing Salmon
Friday, October 30th, 2009
Hey Folks,
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 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, (more…)
Nikon Capture NX2 and Adobe CS4.
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Photo above extracted via Nikon Capture NX2.2.2 (more…)
Grizzly bear cub twins
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
Hey Folks,
Even though they might only be little, grizzly bear cubs are pretty bold – bold enough to climb on a stick and poke their tongue out at my camera. They know full well, of course, that their mother outweighs me by several hundred pounds, is a coupla yards quicker than my aged legs can carry me 
, is quite a bit stronger, has bigger, pointier teeth, sharper, longer claws, and is a little more willing to get in a tussle than I am. Hence, they’re pretty bold.
These cubs were actually not doing so well – only days earlier there had been 3 of them. (more…)
