What can I say??? I am truly blessed with great clients/friends. I spent the last week with some of the most wonderful people. As time approached for my return to the bear boat I wondered how in the world would this next group ever live up to the last bear boat group-I couldn’t even imagine a more wonderful group—but both were equally amazing and I find myself counting my blessings.
Laughter and happy faces greeted me every morning. Folks were spending time sharing not only their amazing images, but also a lot of gear and knowledge from their many years of travels. It was great and I was so happy to be a part of it all. Thank you all once again, for such a terrific time!
Now onto the details and photography from the week on the boat. This year I wanted to try to include a bit more environment for my images— I didn’t do as well as I had hoped with shooting wider !
It started with day one, a special sighting of a large sow with three cubs. It was an amazing first day. The next morning we woke up to another great day at Hallo Bay, we spent time with sows, some nursing cubs and I could not imagine a better start to the week. As the days flew by so did the bears—they finished grazing in the fields and moved onto the plentiful Salmon Berry bushes that were hanging low because of all the berries; can’t hardly blame a bear. Problem is- photographing bears in berry bushes can be awfully hard.
Our boat captain thought that we may need to take a “wiggle” I agreed and we headed to Geographic Harbor in hopes of following the bears toward the salmon. Our first morning skiff ride was less than desirable, I started to second guess myself and our captain. After all of the great photography we had had, this was quite a disappointment. However, our evening shoot was amazing followed by an even more amazing day on the skiff. We had just about every single bear opportunity that you could hope for.
On our last evening we hit the mother load when we had a sub adult bear on a beach that was obviously lonely and bored. He put on a show for us, he kept circling back to show off in front of us. He picked up sand and playfully threw it in the air, he took a huge piece of kelp that looked like a giant rope and held it up to the gods. It was almost too good!
Then we got the call that three wolves were on the beach near our anchored boat-we took off to go see the elusive wolves but just missed them going over the hill. One of the clients that had stayed back was on the boat and saw the wolves, but had her gear packed as it was our last night… you just never know. Maybe next time!
Below are a few of the images that I have processed so far, the flower blur is a 1/6 second, handheld, shiver blur. The last image of the bear standing looking up was captured as the rain had just started to fall harder. I was hoping he would shake off-he never did.
I need to get cracking and get some more images done. But first some rest.
