I had the opportunity to do a bear viewing trip down to the other end of the island this fall. I flew down to Frazer Lakes on Kingfisher Air with my father in-law for the afternoon. If you are ever in Kodiak and want to do some flight seeing I highly recommend Kingfisher, Glenn and Kyle are very professional and know the island like the back of their hand.
I took my full set up with everything from my 300 mm F2.8 down to my 17 mm (which at times would no have been a bad choice). I threw a x1.4 teleconverter on the 300 which was connected to my Canon D50 (a 1:1.6 camera), all this together gave me a 600 mm F4.0. Pretty sweet.
After we walked from the lake down to the salmon weir (where the best bear viewing is) I realized that my setup was more than I needed. I pulled my teleconverter off and eventually put my 5D MkII on to drop back to 300 mm. One of the biggest things that you can’t control in this situation is the position of the sun in relation to the bears. When we first got there there was a large mother bear who was heavily backlit. There isn’t a whole lot you can do in this situation but shoot RAW and aim for the middle exposure. Later in Camera RAW I was able to dial back the highlights and pull as much detail as possible out of the shadows.
Big Momma Bear
When you are faced with an impossible mission like photographing +10 stops of dynamic range you have to make some choices. I decided to keep detail in the bear (the main subject) and let the grass get burned out.
With moving subjects like this there isn’t much else you can do. Fortunately the weather smiled on me and sent a cloud to soften the light.
Once the sun was defused I was able to balance the exposure better to get some color and detail in the grass. IT seems like a minor thing but it makes a huge difference in the feel of the photo.
You can see the sow has her lip out, she was popping her jaw and making some huffing sounds. Not a good sign if you are in close proximity to her (we were up on a berm and in no real danger….I think). In this case she was giving the business to her cub who had wandered too far away from her and too close to us. Shortly after this photo the cub came back to her.
Mother and her cub.
The two of them rolled around for a while and played before walking down to the river and looking for some lunch. Mom found an old rotting pink to chew on and the cub just played with the grass.
All in all a very enjoyable day, even with all the mosquitoes and the tough lighting. If you ever have the chance to see these majestic beasts up close I highly recommend it. They are awesome to see.
Mother bear eating a Pink Salmon
Cub playing with some grass.