On the Lookout

On the Lookout

Another one from my recent trip into the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Sanctuary in northern BC, Canada.

The more time I spend watching and photographing bears, the more I come to appreciate the special bond between a female bear and its dependent young. The complexity of the mother bear-cub relationship rivals that of a human mother and its child (and, trust me, I'm still trying to figure that one out!). One of the aspects of the relationship between a female bear and her cub that is virtually always on display is her almost fanatical protectiveness - even when you think Ma is relaxing and doing something else, she's ALWAYS keeping an eye out for danger that may threaten her cub. And that's what I like about this shot (tho' I have to admit I don't mind the dual reflections and the water trickling down from Ma's chin either). Just prior to this shot Ma had to coerce her cub to come down to the shoreline to drink and watched it all the way down. Once on the beach Ma refused to drink for nearly as long as the cub did and - as shown here - spent a lot of time looking out for danger. What's not obvious here is why Ma is looking to her right - at the time a slight breeze was blowing from the right of the frame, which meant she had that area "covered" with her sense of smell (and knew that the coast was clear in that direction). And, this female pretty much ignores humans when they're behaving themselves offshore in a boat and felt no threat from us. About the only thing she didn't know was what was up the beach (and around the corner) in the direction outside the left side of the image frame. And, that's exactly where this Good Mom kept looking...fully on the lookout while sneaking a drink herself!

Moving to the photographic side of things...I have to say that my taste is normally away from square crops or square presentations of images (I normally prefer the more dynamic 3:2 aspect ratio that most DSLR's natively capture). Yet when I saw this scene setting up I instantly thought that the space occupied by the bears and their reflections - combined with the directions the bears were likely to be looking - would be likely to dictate a square crop. What I wasn't totally sure of at the time of capture was exactly how much foreground and background I wanted to include in the image. And, I knew I didn't care to have a whole lot of space on either side of this image. So, I captured this image vertically - giving me some room to crop a little top and bottom to suit my taste. So what you're looking at here is full-frame horizontally with the bulk of the crop coming off the bottom of the image. Given this image was shot with a Nikon D4, this leaves the cropped full-resolution image at 3280 x 3280 pixels. While this somewhat reduces the options (and possibly the economical value) of the image, in real terms it's still plenty big enough (pixel-wise) for many - if not most - commercial uses...

One final comment: "Conventional" compositional guidelines suggest that your subject should almost always be directed into - or looking into - the frame, rather than out of it (i.e., more room in front of the subject than behind it if the subject is looking in any direction other than straight at you). So...what happens when - like in this case - your subject is pointed ONE way, but looking the OTHER way? Where should you position the subject in the frame? Well, in my opinion, it starts becoming a bit of a crap-shoot. In this case because BOTH bears were angled slightly to the right side of the frame and only ONE was looking to the left side of the frame, I chose to give dominance to the right side of the frame and let protective mom look OUT of the frame (to the left). And, in this case, I happen to LIKE that mom is checking outside the frame and thus leaving the viewer wondering what the heck she is looking at! I know some will agree with this decision and others won't but...hey...this kind of thing is totally subjective and compositional guidelines are just that - guidelines! And, at the end of the day, it's MY decision and MY image! Plus it's good food for thought.

Subject: Female grizzly (Ursus arctos) watching over her thirsty cub
Location: Khutzeymateen Inlet, northern Great Bear Rainforest, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 80-400mm f4.5-5.6 VR @ 200mm - hand-held from floating zodiac. VR on and in "Active" mode.
Exposure: 1/500s @ f7.1; ISO 1000. no compensation compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: Vertical original capture - full frame horizontally, majority of crop (to square) off bottom of image

More details about the image - including post-processing information - can be found here on my website:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/.

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...

Brad

PS: Like all wildlife images on my website and that I post on NPN, the subject is fully wild and completely unconstrained. Besides the potential impact of my presence, nothing has been done to intentionally alter or affect the ongoing behavior of the subject and, of course, there has been no use of any form of bait or other form of wildlife attractants (including vocalizations)