Spring Grizzlies


Posted by Harlan B. Cooper on Sun Apr 26, 2015 3:04 pm

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 I had a chance to photograph some bears this week and get to know some very talented photographers. On the last day of photographing these bears, they were traversing a hill on the opposite side of the river. I was moving along the river bank trying to stay in the front of them as I reached a spot with some down fallen trees. I had to climb over them in order to get to the next good set up spot. After setting up my tripod, I started photographing the bears again, moving along the hill side. When the bears reached a small boulder field they immediately changed their direction of travel now moving down it and straight at me. When photographing mule deer, I always get excited to see big bucks turn and start moving toward me, because at this point the quality of photographs get better with every step and this is the moment you have been waiting for. However, when the bears changed their direction, I could see my photographs through my view finder getting better and better, fast, I was getting excited alright, but this time it would be better described as, spooked.
I thought to myself, “it's time to go now,” but like all photographers, I felt the urge to keep shooting. I did have a large can of bear spray on my side...does that stuff even work? I wasn't interested in doing any product testing that day. There were other photographers on site that I'm sure would have loved to sell their footage of me to the nightly news getting my ass chomped as I tried to scale the fallen trees that now seemed to be directly in my path to safety.
At any rate, I wasn't on the nightly news and I wasn't going to have a cover on some hunting magazine of an angry mother grizzly whirling her teeth around, unlike many smart phone camera-toting tourists. I have been blessed with a very small amount of sense to guide me through this life.

'Til next time,
Harlan

Canon 1D Mark IV
600mm + 1.4
1/250, F8
500 ISO
Harlan B. Cooper
Harlan@relia.net
MonsterMuleDeer.com

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by Cindy Marple on Sun Apr 26, 2015 8:53 pm
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Nice pose, especially the separation of the legs. Good detail in the fur as well.
Cindy Marple
www.cindymarplephoto.com
 

by Gary Briney on Tue Apr 28, 2015 6:15 pm
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Very nice shot -- and I'm glad you had the good sense to exit before things turned nasty.
G. Briney
 

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