Grizzly Family

Hi everyone, I recently returned from a trip to California (sadly not a photography trip). The coastline was incredible, and its only further encouragement for when I get my scuba diving certification in a few weeks. I've finally been able to sort through and edit my shots from our Yellowstone trip in May, and this one is by far one of my favorites. We had gotten up at about 4am to try to photograph a wolf den that was close to a river. After hours of waiting in the cold for the wolves to wake up and walk down for a drink, the only thing that we were able to experience were a few barks off in the distance. While we were waiting I spent my time photographing a grebe and goldeneye, and a beaver. Well after sunrise, we decided to head back towards Dunraven Pass, where we had seen a mother griz with two cubs the day before. The weather was awful, a mix of snow, hail, and rain, and we soon found out that the pass was closed for the next few days. So we decided to drive around in hopes of finding some wildlife to photograph. After a while, we spotted a group of cars pulled off to the side of the road, we were almost certain it was a bear. Sure enough a sow and two cubs were walking through the saplings, so we parked the car and set up across the road. The family didn't seem phased by the now much larger group of yelling people. It was times like that that made me think about the extreme opposites of photographing bobcats in the Badlands, and photographing bears in Yellowstone. In the Badlands we would spend all day trying to find the cats, not seeing a single vehicle all day, while in Yellowstone, every bear encounter is hugely overpopulated by a mass of excited tourists, and bossy self entitled photographers. Obviously not everyone in Yellowstone is like that, but there are always groups of photographers in Yellowstone that feel the need to yell and control the crowd. While I took this photo a safe distance away from the family, and away from where I expected her to cross the road, photographers next to me were screaming at tourists and other photographers to get away from the bear, and to stop stressing the family. Although Yellowstone is easily one of the best places in the country to photograph wildlife, one thing that everyone will always have to deal with is the crowds, and the people who feel the need to control crowds. In most cases that is the rangers job, but in this case, the rangers were nowhere to be seen. Any comments or advice on the shot is greatly appreciated. Thanks again. Joe

Nikon D90, 600mm f4, ISO800, f8.0, 1/350th, taken from a tripod.