One Image Vol 1: Brown bear and cub

Today, I want to introduce a new series to this photo journal where I talk about one image that I think succeeds, why, and what it took to create in the field. The first image I want to feature is a recent one from the Brooks River in Katmai National Park, made during this year’s Bears of Katmai photo workshop.

Brooks Falls is no secret location. It’s popular with tourists and photographers alike, and even has something of a bad reputation among photographers due to the crowds, and yet… And yet, I still enjoy my many visits there because the bear photography opportunities are essentially unparalleled. Visit during peak season, and there are bears everywhere. Dozens of them, up and down the river, from big aggressive boars dominating the prime fishing spots at the falls, to packs of subadults in endless play, to sows with young cubs that tussle on the beach of Naknek Lake.

I’ve photographed there often enough that I don’t really feel the need to spend too much time at the falls themselves. Really, there are only so many images of bears catching salmon that I need in my collection. Rather, I prefer to wander around on the lower river, or photograph from the “riffles” platform where I am more likely to find something a little more unique.

On my recent trip, my clients and I arrived at Brooks early in the morning, hours before the rush of tourists arrived, and had a quiet couple of hours essentially alone on the river with the bears. It was a beautiful, calm morning. Subadult bears and sows with cubs were silently fishing the lower river, diving for salmon, or scavenging fish left behind by other bears. I’d made some images, but nothing really stood out.

Then, from the woods just 50 yards or so up the river bank from one of the viewing platforms, this sow and her two-year old cub emerged from the trees. She sat down on a trampled mound of grass, and her cub descended a few more feet, close to the waters edge, and leaned over the reflective surface of the river.

I saw the light, non-direct morning sun reflected from far side of the river, and saw how it illuminated the bears’ perch on the riverside. “Rembrandt light” I thought to myself.

The artist Rembrandt was a Dutch artist of the mid-1600s, and a fixture of Baroque era portraiture. His characteristic paintings used soft, directional light, in a unique way for his time, and they are instantly recognizable. In human-portrait photography, one common lighting style is to place the key light just forward and above the person’s face, creating soft, but notable shadows across the face on the opposite side. We call it “Rembrandt lighting” for a reason. Rarely, however, does that lighting style extend to wildlife; it’s nearly impossible to create in the field.

But there it was: wild brown bears lit by the distinctive quality of Rembrandt Light. I raised my camera and made a series of perhaps 20 images in about 2 minutes before the bears picked up and moved.

Handheld with an 840mm equivalent lens (300mm with a 1.4x TC, on a m4/3 format (2x crop) Olympus camera), the 1/400th shutter speed needed in the dim conditions was barely fast enough for sharpness, and even so about 2/3rds of the images ended up soft, but this one is sharp down to the whiskers. Technically, the image worked, but where it really succeeds, is in the bears themselves.

I’m anthropomorphizing here of course, but I see in both those bears some very human expressions and emotions. The sow looks tired, worn out, but resolute, and watchful. She’s tired, but certainly not beaten by the chore of raising a cub in a food-rich but dangerous environment for young bears. The cub however, looks a bit bored, and maybe mischievous? As though he’s eyeing some fun/trouble down the river.

This photograph required almost no post-processing other than basic adjustments to emphasize the lighting. In Lightroom, I reduced the highlights, brought up the shadows a touch, added a substantial dose of clarity, a moderate vignette, and I was done.

The combination of light, moment, and expression, all tied together by the peaceful setting have made this image my single favorite from my recent trip to Brooks.

Want to join me next year? A couple of spots are still available! Learn more and sign up!