Cautious Curiosity...
Another shot from my recent Khutzeymateen photo tour...
One of my own shooting goals during my 2012 photo tours into the Khutzeymateen Inlet was to capture some intimate portraits of bears that showed their unique personality traits.
Two big parts of conveying personality are to effectively capture the subject's eyes (they say SO much) and to include just enough context in your image to "have it all make sense." This year-old grizzly cub was a particularly good subject. This cub, along with its mother and sibling, showed up early in our trip and there's a very good chance this was the cubs first encounter with humans (they weren't present the year before as "cubs of the year" and there are no human settlements - or humans - anywhere near where these images were shot). The mother was very calm around us. But the cubs were, initially, much less thrilled with our presence. After a few days they calmed down significantly ("well...I guess if mom is OK with these guys they can't be so bad..."), but still almost always kept an eye on us. And this cub invariably kept mom between herself and us, but definitely seemed super curious about these "strange creatures in the gray boat with the big eyes in the middle of their head". She was definitely cautiously curious!
To portray this "cautious curiosity" I decided I wanted to capture an image of her intently staring at me, and hopefully one of her doing it while hiding out behind, or peering around, mom. So that's exactly what I focused on capturing (literally and figuratively). While this seems like a simple and straightforward thing to do, what it means in practice is that to get the shot you want - which may occur for only a fleeting moment - you have to pass on a ton of other photo ops around you, which can be darned challenging. Things like the other cub standing up and posing perfectly. Or mom standing up and scanning around for danger. Or about a billion other "cute" or noteworthy things. Was it worth it? Well...for ME it was...I did end up with the shot I wanted. And it was a good reminder to me about the importance of shooting selectively, rather than handling my camera like a machine gun and "shooting" everything that moved
Subject: Grizzly (
Urus arctos) cub checking me out...
Location: Khutzeymateen Inlet, Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VRII lens - hand-held from floating zodiac. VR on and in "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/400s @ f6.3; ISO 3600. -0.33 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is about 75% of the full-framed image
Additional details about the image (including processing details) available here
http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/detail_3.html.
Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!
Cheers...thanks for looking...
Brad
Comments
11 commentsThere is great detail in the cub's fur and I love that curious look he has. So cute how he's just peeking around his mom to get a look at the guy with the camera
Congrats on yet another great bear image!
I like this photo for the reasons you've stated, and also because along with that cautious curious look, there's a hint of the wild ferocious animal it will become soon. Well captured to isolate it from the mother, yet show it's dependance on her.
Thanks - and these guys are particularly ferocious in spring if you're a piece of grass or, in the fall, a spawned-out salmon!
But I'm just pulling your chain a little - once this little cub becomes an adult she WILL be immensely powerful and must be given the respect a potentially dangerous carnivore deserves.
Cheers...
Brad
Thanks for sharing the tech. Shot from a boat...very cool.
Amazing how much thought you put into your wildlife photography. I don't shoot wildlife often, but have learned so much from reading your posts and viewing your work. We have so many Pronghorn around here, I might just have to go out and spend some time with them this year. Thank you for sharing.