Bear Personalities II

Personalities II: Curious, Contemplative...and Cautious

As the name of this photo would suggest, this shot in one of a series where a mother grizzly and 3 cubs were cooperatively relaxing right in front of us (the previous one was posted about a month ago, and can be seen in my gallery). One of the things I found so fascinating about this scene was how subtle shifts in positions and poses of the 4 bears slightly shifted the personality exuded by the bears. In most shots the two cubs shown here maintained consistency in their 'tudes - the one cub WAS exceptionally curious about us - and the second WAS exceptionally wary and cautious. Mom, though, went from looking confident to contemplative (which is what I felt when this shot was taken) and more.

As with the other images in this series, I tried to use a combination of composition and selective focus, along with careful use of depth-of-field (DoF), to control the eye-flow of the viewer. My intent in this shot was to have the viewer's eyes to FIRST travel to the cub in the middle, then explore mom (including her relaxed eyes and her claws) and finally find "Waldo" warily peering out from behind mom. Hopefully my plan worked!

Of course, the amount of DoF control one has in the field - especially when using super-telephoto lenses - is limited. But, in recent years, the advent of cameras with exceptional high ISO performance has meant that we can shoot low light scenes using a wider variety (including smaller) apertures than ever before. In this case I was able to get the DoF I wanted to keep both Ma and Curious Cub in focus by stopping down to f8 (while hand-holding 550mm of focal length). It did force me to use a much higher ISO (ISO 4500) than would have been possible a few years ago (while still capturing a very usable photo). For me, this gaining of control over DoF - even in low-light field settings - is the biggest advantage of the latest professional cameras.

Subject: Adult female Grizzly (Ursus arctos) with two very different cubs
Location: Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4s
Lens: Nikkor 400mm f2.8E VR plus TC-14EIII (1.4x) telconverter (550mm total focal length). Hand-held from floating zodiac. VR on and in "Sport" mode.
Exposure: 1/640s @ f8; ISO 4500. -0.67 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Moderate - this is about 85% of the full-framed image

More details about the image - including a 2400-pixel version of the image - 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