Nap Time

Excellent shot Dan! Color, comp and sharpness are all perfect to my eye, not to mention the great bit of behavior captured. Kudos!

Wonderful image! Excellent detail, nice poses, and an intimate moment.
The dark area behind the cub's back is a little dfistracting; perhaps you'd choose to clone it out.
Well done!
Sandy

Very intimate! Really like the low angle.

Thanks for the comments. Sandy, I thought about cloning out the dark spot but don't have the skills to do so without losing the fur detail on the back of the cub. Actually once I figured out the bears weren't either going to run away or eat my face off I took a couple of steps to the right and got the driftwood out of the background. For some reason this particular version struck my fancy though. When I get time to process I'll post one of the others from a slightly different angle.

Great poses n setting here, just love their lazy postures !!! I agree on cloning out the dark area, just wondering you've got good dof at F 4.
Jagdeep Rajput

A Beauty Dan Excellent detail and mood, a very pleasing image to look at.

Ken Archer

Fantastic image Dan... awesome interaction and excellent execution. Great work.

Nice use of the low point of view. Love the similar appearance of the two generations of bears. Very cute expression on the youngster and mom looks nice and relaxed. Great look at her amazing claws - wow. The dark object behind the cub's hind end is a minor distraction (very minor). Lake Clark sounds and looks wonderful.

Hi Dan,

I think this is a very endearing image. Detail is very good, love seeing those claws, and the cub is just wonderful. Personally I have no problem with the out-of-focus object (tree?) behind the cub - it's clearly way in the background and to me it's a "looking for some nit" kind of thing. Something I think would have improved the image even more (but was totally out of your control) would have been just a tad of light in the bear's eyes, particularly mom's - right now they're kind of "little black holes". But...the light wasn't there and the great pose was...so you had to nab it!

Cheers...thanks for sharing this one...

Brad

Thanks for the comments everyone. Gary, Lake Clark is indeed a beatiful place. The ratio of clear to rainy days is not high so one has to either rely on blind luck or spend enough time for the law of averages to kick in. Yes, Brad, it was very frustrating that I couldn't get clear eye contact from both bears. In this shot I believe the mom's eyes are actually closed. You know how it goes, when you are culling images different frames have different attributes. This one had the best position of the two animals heads and clear view of the claws. The spot behind the cub is the root end of a diftwood tree.

Excellent shot Dan, I like the look from the cub and the pose of both bears. Wonderful detail on the larger version, nice job in getting this in not such ideal lighting, way to go. The larger image looks great

Beautiful and very intimate image of mother and cub, Dan. And, I like the low angle you managed to get here.