Trusting Ma...

Trusting Ma's Watchful Eye

The complex relationship between a mother bear and its young is an amazing thing to behold. For the first three years (or so) of its life a young bear relies upon Ma for nearly everything - food, security, companionship and more. The trust and faith a cub shows in its mother to keep it safe is complete and absolute.

Cubs, like all young and growing animals, need a whole lot of sleep. And when they do go to sleep, they tend (unlike adult bears) to totally crash and are pretty much oblivious to the world. Ma bear, on the other hand, doesn't allow herself the luxury of a deep sleep when her cubs are out and exposed - she may lay down and rest and occasionally close her eyes, but her ears and nose are continuously twitching and active, and every few minutes she opens her eyes and glances around, always vigilant...

Over the years I've photographed a LOT of shaking bears and in most cases I've experimented with slowish shutter speeds (in the 1/250 to 1/400 second range) in an effort to produce those hard-to-capture "freeze MOST of the action with some blurring of the fastest moving shaking parts" images. In 2014 I decided to depart from my past efforts of capturing those "freeze-blurs" and go for freezing the action. So I whenever a full body shake was a possibility I quickly readjusted my camera's shutter speed to be in the 1/1600 to 1/2000 range.

In this shot I attempted to show a bit of the complex relationship between the ever-trusting cub (who is currently totally zonked out and fully in dreamland!) and the ever-alert and protective mother bear. Hopefully it works for you...

Note that some of you might find the technique used to make this shot on the interesting side - while others may feel it is borderline unethical (in terms of technique, not anything to do with the bears). I'd go into it here, but then the commentary would end up being really long (even for me! ). If anyone wants to follow-up on this, just use the link below the tech specs to get to the discussion (click on the "In the Field" tab under the image as it appears on my website).

Subject: Ma and cub grizzly (Ursus arctos) enjoying some down time
Location: Khutzeymateen Inlet, northern Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 80-400mm f4.5-5.6 VR @ 380mm - hand-held from floating zodiac. VR on and in "Active" mode.
Exposure: 1/125s @ f9; ISO 1800. -0.67 stop compensation compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Very minor - this is about 95% of full frame

More details about the image - including post-processing information, a higher res version of the image, and the discussion referred to above - can be found here on my website:

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

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

Cheers...

Brad