Glacier National Park - Bears for Dinner

Dixie

Here's what we shot around dinner time.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Giphsub

Nice pic looks like he had spotted you too! How safe is it shooting those fellas?

Maestro

Wow. Looks like the first bear is winking at you. Nice image.

Dixie

Giphsub wrote:

Nice pic looks like he had spotted you too! How safe is it shooting those fellas?

Thanks, Mike. Pretty safe as long as you don't get between the mother and her cubs and make them feel cornered or harassed. The mother was looking in my direction, but I'm not sure if it was at me or just one of the other people there trying to get photos

Giphsub

right. It must be amazing to see them up close. Thanks for the reply.

jdmphoto

Beautiful photograph I live about 10 minutes away from Glacier park and have not been fortunate to see the bears up close. But I guess I'd rather not see them up close while hiking in the park. Congratulations and I hope you have a wonderful visit to Glacier Park.:D

kdog

That's awesome. Some day I want to be in a place where I can see bears like that. Since you asked for comments and suggestions, I do have one minor nit, which I'm sure you already know. Those little cub ears sticking up over the mom's back don't do anything for the shot.That little fella needs to be either in the shot or out of the shot (preferably in of course.) I'm wondering if you have more of these guys.

Cheers,
-joel

raptorcaptor

Very nice capture!

Harryb

Terrific Dixie, great colors.

greenpea

Great capture Dixie.

I really should have just followed you around all week to get my bear pics, you seemed to have a nack for finding the big game in the park and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your GNP pics.

Unfortunately my camera died right before my one close up bear sighting :cry

zacker

WOW! really nice, and quite dangerous too as its a mom with cubs. Ever get charged getting that close? Only thing I have ever been charged by was a gator in the glades..lol that was scarey enough.. besides, i was sure i could out run it to the car... not a bear though.. did you see any more? I gotta get to Glacier some day.. but first i wanna get a LOOOOOOOONg lens!

Great shot!

Dixie

jdmphoto wrote:

Beautiful photograph I live about 10 minutes away from Glacier park and have not been fortunate to see the bears up close. But I guess I'd rather not see them up close while hiking in the park. Congratulations and I hope you have a wonderful visit to Glacier Park.:D

I'm not the greatest on distances, but I would have to guess that I was a good 100-150 yards away from this sow and her two cubs. Other than the wind and the cold (for me anyway), I had a thoroughly enjoyable visit. Thank you for your comments.

Dixie

kdog wrote:

That's awesome. Some day I want to be in a place where I can see bears like that. Since you asked for comments and suggestions, I do have one minor nit, which I'm sure you already know. Those little cub ears sticking up over the mom's back don't do anything for the shot.That little fella needs to be either in the shot or out of the shot (preferably in of course.) I'm wondering if you have more of these guys.

Cheers,
-joel

Joel,

I agree about the ear and toyed with taking it out (which I may do yet). I have quite a few more which I am still processing so I will have to see what else comes out of this series of shots. Regretfully, it was very late in the day and I was shooting at 400mm with ISO speeds from 400-1600. Even then I was handholding with some fairly low shutter speeds. This particular shot was at 400mm, 1/160 sec, at f/5.6 and -1/3 exposure compensation. Thank you for your comments.

Dixie

raptorcaptor wrote:

Very nice capture!

Thanks, Glenn.

Dixie

Harryb wrote:

Terrific Dixie, great colors.

Thanks, Harry.

Dixie

greenpea wrote:

Great capture Dixie.

I really should have just followed you around all week to get my bear pics, you seemed to have a nack for finding the big game in the park and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your GNP pics.

Unfortunately my camera died right before my one close up bear sighting :cry

Thanks, Greenpea. You're more than welcome to tag along anytime. The more the merrier. I hope that your camera dying was anything worse than dead batteries.

Dixie

zacker wrote:

WOW! really nice, and quite dangerous too as its a mom with cubs. Ever get charged getting that close? Only thing I have ever been charged by was a gator in the glades..lol that was scarey enough.. besides, i was sure i could out run it to the car... not a bear though.. did you see any more? I gotta get to Glacier some day.. but first i wanna get a LOOOOOOOONg lens!

Great shot!

Thanks, Zacker. Better re-check the speeds on those gators. They can run about as fast as a horse for about 30 yards when they get up on their legs. Thankfully, they can't do that except for short distances.

As to the bears charging - I've been lucky. I have gotten to within 10-15 feet of them in the Smokies without any problems. Now that isn't possible because the NPS put in a 50 yard rule for bears in the Great Smoky Mountain NP. I was bluff charged once and that was entirely my fault. I knew that a black bear was in the area, but the last time I had seen him he was about 100 yards off to my right. I was cutting through a blackberry patch and I ran eyeball to eyeball with a large male black bear (or possibly another bear which I hadn't spotted before). He was as surprised as I was which caused the problem. He reared up on his back legs and then lunged forward on all four for about 10-15 feet with a loud snort to let me know that I was encroaching on his area. I just faced him and started backing up slowly. He watched me for about a minute and saw that I wasn't going to get closer and then he went back to eating blackberries instead of me.

Ric Grupe

Of course you want to leave this excellent capture as is for posterity purposes...but, don't you think it would look better if you cloned out those ears over the back of the BIG bear? Maybe even remove the bear on the left, whose face you can't see, and just have the one bear surrounded by the wildflowers.

Dixie

Ric Grupe wrote:

Of course you want to leave this excellent capture as is for posterity purposes...but, don't you think it would look better if you cloned out those ears over the back of the BIG bear? Maybe even remove the bear on the left, whose face you can't see, and just have the one bear surrounded by the wildflowers.

Ric, I agree and did with kdog up above. I have other pics from the series which will probably be easier to work with. Check the one in this post. The two cubs still have their heads down, but it is not as distracting as in this image. Thank you for the input. It is appreciated.

windoze

Dixie wrote:

Here's what we shot around dinner time.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

wow - awesome!



troy

Dixie

windoze wrote:

wow - awesome!

troy

Thanks, Troy.