The Spirit of Sunset
It's always a treat to catch a glimpse of the rare "Spirit Bear" that's found within the moody and spectacular Great Bear Rainforest. After all, only about 300 of these rare bears exist in the world. But catching one being kissed by the very last golden rays of sunlight as it poses for you on a remote, barnacle-covered shoreline - well, that's an out-of-this world moment and extreme privilege!
The first of my "Into the Great Bear Rainforest" photo tours in 2013 started off with a big bang. We had spent the bulk of day 1 being entertained by (and photographing) 12-15 Humpback Whales as they went about doing whale things. We were feeling totally satisfied at the end of the day as we headed toward our anchorage for the evening. Then, our eagle-eyed guide spotted this bear on the shoreline WAY off in the distance (thanks again Chris!). The bear was methodically feeding on a mix of salmon and barnacles and seemed content to stay put until we were able to get close to it. For the first 15 minutes or so the bear did interesting things, but was in a tough-to-photograph location (a mix of direct light and harsh shadows and partially obscured by logs). As the light waned we decided to leave the bear alone and move on. As we pulled away in our Zodiac the bear chose to march right out into the open and bid us adieu from the shoreline. And, he gave us this "other-worldly" photo op!
NOTE: For those who aren't familiar with Spirit Bears, they are a rare, genetically-based colour variant of the good ol' Black Bear. They can be encountered wherever black bears are found, but for some reason are found in high occurrence (10-25% of all black bears) in only one small part of British Columbia, Canada.
Subject: Spirit Bear (
Ursus americana) "posing" in last sunrays of day
Location: Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikkor 400mm f2.8 VR lens - handheld from floating Zodiac. VR on and in "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/400s at f3.2. ISO 11,400. -0.33 stop compensation from matrix metered exposure.
Crop: This is about 95% of full frame - just a real small cropping tweak for composition
As almost always, a bunch more info - including processing details - are available for this shot on my website. This shot was tough to pull off in the low light and with the extreme contrast...and that's the main theme of the discussion on my website:
http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/.
Comments and feedback greatly appreciated...probably better to view larger version prior to doing so...
Cheers...
Brad
Comments
9 commentsThe lighting on the bear is super and really highlights it against the dark BG.
The sharpness of focus on the bear contrasts well with most everything else being OOF.
A keeper. Well done sir.
This is very nice, can I ask what a "spirit" bear is?
Jagdeep Rajput
A Spirit Bear is a rare colour-variant of the black bear (i.e., the same species). The white colour is genetically-based - it's a simple recessive trait (where you only get the white colour expressed if the bear has two copies of the recessive gene). While theoretically Spirit Bears can be found anywhere black bears are found, they are exceptionally rare in all populations except one on the central coast of BC, where in a small area somewhere between 10 and 25% of the black bears are white. Total number of Spirit Bears is estimated at between 200 and 300 animals (worldwide).
The Spirit Bears have strong cultural significance to local First Nations on the BC coast, and have a special place in their folklore. Spirit Bears are legally protected (can't be hunted), but black coloured "carriers" of the (those black-coloured bears that have one dominant "black" gene and one recessive "white" gene - the heterozygotes) can be, and are, hunted.
I could go on about the theoretical reasons as to why the proportion of white bears is so high in that one part of the BC coast, but it gets pretty technical and likely only of interest to biologists!
Hope this helps...
Brad