The Cute Trio

The Cute Trio

I don't know of anyone who doesn't find young animals cute. Indeed, some argue that the factors that help to define "cute" (including disproportionately big eyes and short "near-pug" noses) are part of an evolutionary strategy to reduce aggression against young, vulnerable animals - both from conspecifics as well as from members of other species (and the reality of natural cross-species adoptions is at least consistent with this argument). So...when these three grizzly cubs-of-the-year chose to give us this unforgettable pose in a remote inlet in the Great Bear Rainforest well...it was a wildlife photographers dream come true! I was with a group of photographers at the time and it was interesting that evening to compare the different approaches everyone took at the time (and I mean beyond the "crap, mine's out of focus" comments!). I had an 80-400mm lens in my hands at the time and chose to back off (to 260mm) and capture the moment as what I think of as an "enviroscape" where the subjects are shown within enough of the environment in which they live to give the image context (as opposed to an "animalscape" where the subjects are even smaller in the frame and shown within a much broader landscape).

Those who have been with me in the field know that I'm pretty obsessed with Depth-of-Field (DoF) issues when I'm shooting wildlife. I personally consider DoF as the most under-appreciated of the creative elements of wildlife photography (and it's one of the main reasons I shoot with high-speed super-telephotos - such as the 400mm f2.8E VR - a lot of the time...i.e., so that I can maximize the range of apertures and DoF options available to me). To me getting the DoF just right (for any given scene) is a fascinating exercise in problem-solving and optimization of variables. When you start dealing with two or more subjects your soft-drive's (i.e., your brain's) DoF optimization algorithm must shift - and in most cases the primary consideration becomes finding enough DoF to get the critical regions of all your subjects in focus. This can mean that another variable - which is often separating your subjects from the background through choosing the right aperture - has to be compromised. But this was one of those rare multiple-subject scenes where the subjects aligned themselves almost perfectly along the same focal plane (thanks little fuzz dudes!) AND the distance between them and the background was sufficient that I was able to render the subjects AND the background just the way I wanted. It isn't often this happens, especially with 3 hyperactive grizzly cubs!

Subject: Trio of Grizzly (Ursus arctos) cubs posing
Location: Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikkor AF-S 80-400mm VR @ 260mm. Hand-held from floating zodiac. VR on and in "Active" mode.
Exposure: 1/320s @ f6.3; ISO 1800. -0.3 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Minor - this is about 90% 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 (or better yet the 2400 pixel version on my website).

NOTE: In the spirit of full disclosure (which is important to me) - in my opinion this image crosses the line from simple digital processing and/or digital correction to digital manipulation. In the original capture there was a stout stick running from the log and up to the face of the cub on the left side of the image. It was removed during post-processing.

Cheers...

Brad