Yin and Yang

Yin and Yang

Crazy high ISO week continues!

This was a fascinating scene to watch play out. We were in the Khutzeymateen River in northern BC in May 2012 when a female grizzly bear waded in and swam across a narrow channel in the estuary right in front of us. Cubs are great swimmers too, but they often seem much more reluctant than the adults to voluntarily enter the water. In this shot the cubs are battling a major internal conflict - they want to stay with mom but are really, really hesitant to enter the water and swim the channel. The tension of the yin and yang the cubs were struggling with was absolutely palpable - and I think (or hope!) it comes through in this image.

In the minutes leading up to this shot the cubs had searched up and down for some way to cross the channel without swimming, but had come up empty. About a minute after this shot the cubs finally took to the water and about a minute later they were happily re-united with mom!

If you ignore the years of work done by the guides to find this location - and then fight through layers upon layers of government bureaucracy to have it protected as a sanctuary - the biggest photographic challenge in capturing this unforgettable scene was finding enough light to record it. My belief - which I'm sure is shared by most photographers - is that unless blurry shots are carefully planned (like a good motion blur) they are pretty much useless. Simply put, I'd rather have a slightly noisy shot than a blurry one. In this instance that philosophy meant that I would simply let the ISO "float" as high as needed to give me a shutter speed I could hand-hold my heavy 400mm lens at. At the time I was also giving a new camera its first really tough field test so I simply thought "let's see what this pup can do!" It was a pleasant surprise to find out that I could shoot at these kind of ISO's and come away with gallery-quality photos! The rate of technological change in the world of digital photography can be incredibly daunting and intimidating (and expensive to keep up with!), but if you're one to push the boundaries of what's possible with your images, it's nice to know that those advances in technology have real-world consequences and advantages!

Subject: Grizzly cubs (Urus arctos) dealing with internal conflict!
Location: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 @ f5.6; ISO 11,400. --0.33 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is over 90% of full frame

Like almost always, additional details about the image (including processing details) available here:

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

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...

Brad

PS to Gary: Here you go - a horizontal-format image!