Little Dude, Big 'tude

Little Dude, Big 'tude

It's always fun to see (and photograph) bear cubs - providing mom allows you the privilege of doing so without tearing off your head! This little guy (likely a male) absolutely cracked me up. Not only did he spontaneously burst into frantic play bouts (that reminded me of those nutso antics young dogs do that I laughingly refer to as "hyper puppy" episodes - where they run in circles and buck and twist like a stallion) but he just had SO MUCH 'tude (attitude) for such a small little guy. I have an image of an adult 1000 lb grizzly in the EXACT same pose and with the same look of disdain/disgust on his face that DID produce a feeling of terror on the recipient (i.e., me), but who does this 40 lb bundle of fur think he's scaring?? Talk about personality personified!!

It's no secret that I like to test my gear thoroughly to fully understand its capabilities when I'm in the field. But I normally test my gear BEFORE I'm on an expensive shoot. In this case, though, I decided to test something "on the fly" - we were observing the cub and its sibling and mother along a shoreline in the Khutzeymateen and they were just too far away for me to get any decent shots with the gear I had on hand (a 400mm f2.8 prime and my D3s). I had the "new" 2x teleconverter with me (the TC-20EIII) and past testing had shown it to work quite well with the 400mm f2.8 lens. But I had performed my previous tests while on a firm footing (solid ground) and in this case I was bobbing in a Zodiac. But, I thought "...what the heck..it's not like wasting a few pixels on this guy is going to break the bank" - so I mounted the 2x TC, stopped way down (partly to squeeze more quality out of the TC, and partly to ensure that I had enough depth-of-field to render the whole head sharply with my 800mm of lens). And, because I was using a camera with good high ISO performance, I had lots of ISO to play with - so it was 1/640s (to help minimize issues of camera shake), f13 (to get the DOF I wanted), and ISO 2200. And here's the result - not half bad, eh? I dare say that trying to shoot this image using "state of the art" equipment even 5 short years ago (under the conditions I was forced to work under) would have produced nothing more than a blurry mess. Keeping up with the advances in technology can be challenging (on both the pocket book and for the brain cells!) but...holy smokes...the new technologies that have been integrated into our photographic tools have made a HUGE difference in the field!

Subject: Grizzly Bear (Urus arctos) cub giving me some attitude!
Location: Khutzeymateen Inlet - Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D3s
Lens: Nikkor 400 mm f/2.8 VRII lens paired with 2x TC-20EIII teleconverter (800mm EFL) - handheld from floating Zodiac
Exposure: 1/640s at f13. ISO 2200. -1.33 stop compensation from matrix metered exposure.
Crop: About 75% of full frame

As usual, more info about the image (including more processing details, etc) available here on my website:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/detail_4.html.

Any feedback welcome - and appreciated!

Cheers...thanks for looking...

Brad