Tundra Triangles...

An "ancient" image (in digital years - it was shot back in 2004), and this one is for Lon - his comment about geometric patterns in another post last week, along with the snow and cold outside my office right now, made me think of this shot...

It's my experience that one of the most critical (and difficult) things to do in wildlife photography is to fall slightly out of awe (or love, I suppose) with the animals you are shooting and remember to treat them simply as photographic subjects. And of course, to remember that to portray ANY subject most effectively one has to apply basic compositional principles. For instance, when you're watching sparring polar bears, it's totally easy to get completely wound up in the action and, in some respects, relax your "photographer's eye". In this case, I had been freezing my butt off for a good twenty minutes (outside of the warmth of our tundra buggy) watching and photographing these bears sparring when I started to notice the interesting geometric patterns their bodies were forming while mock battling. Suddenly I had something "new" to watch for and, before long, the bears gave me - for a brief instant - this interesting series of triangles. Because I was watching for it and was ready to shoot, I managed to capture the instant. Interestingly, when I was reviewing my images on my laptop that evening, about half of my companions who were doing the "peeking-over-the-shoulder" thing instantly noticed the triangles and exclaimed "cool" (or something of the sort). Others who have seen this image over the years have often said they liked it, but didn't know why. When I show them similar images, but without the strong triangular shapes, they're usually less interested in them. Shapes, lines, and other compositional principles matter in ALL photography, regardless of the strength of subject matter. And this is true even if the viewer knows NOTHING about "composition" or why they like an image.

By the way - the background in this image is NOT "blown out" - I shot this in a blizzard and the background was absolutely featureless and very, very white!

Subject: Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) sparring
Location: Cape Churchill, MB, Canada
Camera: Nikon D2H
Lens: Nikon 200-400 mm f/4G ED-IF AF-S VR lens (@ 360mm) - supported on a beanbag. VR on and set to "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/500s at f5. ISO 200. +1.0 stop compensation from matrix metered exposure.
Crop: Minimal - this is about 85-90% of original capture (crop off sides only)

All the gory details behind this image (field notes, all camera settings and processing details, conservation, etc.) can be found at:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/mammals/bears/detail_34.html.

Cheers...thanks in advance for feedback on the image or commentary...

Brad

PS: I'll be around over the holiday season but may not have the time to post any more images until after Christmas - season's greetings and best wishes to all Fauna Gallery regulars (and to any guests...).